The Evolution Of Regulating Oligopoly With Anti-monopoly Law: From Univariate-model To Multivariate-model

From the development and practice of main western industrialized countries, therehas been a rising trend of concentration of major productive sectors. A large number ofmultinational corporations as the representative of oligopolies hold overwhelmingadvantages in these countries' economic sectors, and become the sign of their nationaleconomy competence. Therefore it is believe that forming and cultivating large enterprisesand groups with strong international competitiveness and improving the nation's industrialconcentration plays a significant role in the overall market performance of a nation.Although prominent theories of industry organization from Harvard School and ChicagoSchool differ greatly about the motivation and influencing factors in market structure,enterprise behavior, and market performance."should use antitrust law to regulateenterprises' behavior, restrict the development of monopoly power to maintain anappropriate competition in the market" and "market structure determines corporatebehavior, which in turn determines the market performance" is their commonunderstanding. However, in the implementation of antitrust law, the differences betweenthe "regulating an oligopoly's behavior"(action) and the "normative behavior of anoligopoly"(result) is often overlooked. Thus, the relationship between "reasonable marketstructure-normative behavior of enterprise-perfect market performance" is wronglysimplified as "antitrust law regulate enterprise's behavior-perfect market performance".Because of this, the regulating effect of antitrust law is overly magnified, and theenforcement agencies rely solely on antitrust law to regulate oligopoly.As a result, many oligopolies has been mistreated by the enfocement agency, because oligopolies prefer to"dance along the", thus the deterrent effect of antitrust law is counterproductive. Theenforcement of antitrust laws thus becomes an obstacle against growth of enterprises(including the oligopoly) while negatively affecting the public's valuation of antitrust law.To overcome the drawbacks of using a univariate-model, the regulator has had tocomplete the system from all-round aspects, including preventing violations before theyoccur, monitoring for violations, and providing reasonable relief measures. The legislation,enforcement and justice of antitrust law has also introduced a great number of economic,moral, ethical, cultural factors, which interact and greatly enrich the regulation "tool-kit"of antitrust law, resulting in a change from an univariate-model to a multivariate-model.This shift has a solid practical basis, and it's a process that regulator constantly balance thesystem demands according to social changes. This shift also has a solid theoretical basis, itreflects the superstructure's response to the changes in economic relationship, and it alsoreflects that as a regulation manner, antitrust law's response to different regulation objects,different manners for different and appropriate tools. In the survival of the fittestenvironment that generated from multivariate-model, regulators put in a lot of additionaleffort to supplement the existing system. But the effects of these efforts are mixed. Somesystems had a great success, such as the forgiveness system and compliance system; butsome failed and were replaced by regulator replacement system. Those systems thatsuccessfully survived had amazing convergence.In the era of approaching to "better regulation", to learn about these experiences andpromote multivariate-model antitrust regulation on oligopoly in China, which is alate-developing area, is our late-developing advantage when establish related antitrust lawsystem, it's also an effective way for China to achieve "cultivate large enterprises andgroups with strong international competitiveness" strategy and improve oligopolymonopoly market performance.