The Research On Market Structure Behind The “Price Dilemma” Existing In Our Resource Products’ International Trade

The production of resource products highly relies on the distribution of natural resources, while the distribution of natural resources has obvious feature—regional and imbalance, which making some areas have the advantage of natural oligopoly.Combined with the irreplaceability of resource products in the production and living,the demand for resource product is rigid, making its oligopolistic market structure more apparent.With the rapid development of our social and economy, our country has got the advantage of oligopoly in international trade. However the quantity superiority did not bring us price advantage, on the contrary, we are trapped in the situation of "buy up and selling down". This is mainly manifested in two aspects: on the one hand, we have the obvious advantage on the amount of import, such as iron ore、crude oil. While we have to accept the monopoly price passively, and which squeezing the profits of domestic downstream industry; On the other hand, although we mastered the production of some resources, such as rare earth、coke, we still export at a low price, resulting in the loss of resources at a low price. Based on this fact, this article mainly studies the prices of resource products and market forces from the perspective of industrial organization theory.In terms of theoretical analysis, this paper puts forward the concept of the domestic market structure and international market structure. Because of the imbalance of distribution, international market structure has natural monopoly advantage, which means potential market power. Whether the potential market power can be converted to the actual market power depends on the structure of the domestic market. If a country’s concentration of domestic market is high, so are more likely to form joint competitiveness, then the potential international market forces will translate into real market power; And if the market structure of a country is competitive, its difficult to form joint power, even making a country’s potential market power dissipate gradually.In terms of empirical test, we measured the market power of iron ore and rare earth with GK model. On the market of rare earth, we lack market power in Japan and United States and other major importer; As the world’s largest iron ore importer, Brazil and Australia has certain market power in our country. Although compared to Japan, ourcountry has the total import advantage, but pricing power is far less than Japan.Finally, in order to change the domestic competitive market structure and improve the pricing power of resource products, this paper put forward some measures in three aspects: government, industry and enterprise.