11、國家財富的決定因素
The wealth of a nation depends on the effort and skills of its workers, its natural resources, and the capital and technology available to it for making the most of those skills and resources. Yet national wealth depends not only on how much a nation can produce for itself but also on the balance between how much its products are sought by other nations and how much of other nations’ products it seeks. International trade does not result just from countries lacking certain resources or products, such as oil or various food crops or efficient automobiles. Even if a country can produce everything it needs by itself, it still benefits from trade with other countries. If a country does the things it does most efficiently （in terms of either quality or cost, or both） and sells its products to other nations, such a system theoretically enables all participating countries to come out ahead.
12、競爭對經濟的好處
Competitions, in economics, are conditions that are present in markets where buyers and sellers interact to establish prices and exchange goods and services. Economic competition is the means whereby the self-interest of buyers and sellers acts to serve the needs of society as well as those of individual market participants. Society is served when the maximum number of goods is produced at the lowest possible prices.
13、完美競爭及其存在的三大條件
The theoretical ideal developed by economists to establish the conditions under which competition would achieve maximum effectiveness is known as “perfect” competition. Although rarely possible, perfect competition, as a concept, provides a useful benchmark for evaluating performance in actual markets. Perfect competition exists when （1）an industry has a large number of business firms as well as buyers; （2）the firms on the average are small; and （3）buyers and sellers have complete knowledge of all transactions within the market. The practical significance of a large number of small firms and many buyers is that the power to influence the behavior of the participants in the market is thoroughly dispersed. In other words, no single person or business has the power to dictate the terms on which the exchange of goods and services takes place. Market results then are truly impersonal. Under conditions of perfect competition, economists contend, goods and services would be produced as efficiently as possible—that is, at the lowest possible price and cost—and consumers would get the maximum amount of the goods and services they desire.
14、可用競爭
The absence of perfect competition in most markets led to a search for a more realistic alternative to evaluate performance in specific instances. Among the best-known alternatives is the concept of “workable” competition. In most industries the number of business firms is not so great as to preclude an individual firm from having some power to influence market prices and conditions. In addition, participants rarely have complete knowledge of market conditions. However, departures from the ideal of perfect competition often are not great enough to warrant government intervention into the market （through antitrust action or direct regulation） in order to improve the situation. Competition may be workable in the sense that the results achieved are roughly comparable to what is supposed to happen under the theoretical ideal of perfect competition. The chief drawback to the workable-competition concept is its vagueness; no precise criteria have been developed to determine when workable competition actually exists.
15、資本主義經濟中的競爭
In a purely capitalist system, on the one hand, competition is seldom free because for any resource, product, or service, a few large corporations or unions tend to monopolize the market and charge more than open competition would allow. Discrimination based on economically irrelevant social attitudes （for example, against minorities and women, in favor of friends and relatives） further distorts the ideal of free competition. And even if the system is efficient, it tends to make some individuals very rich and some very poor. Thus, the United States, for example, tries to limit the extreme effects of its basically capitalist economic system by means of selective government intervention in the free-market system. This intervention includes tax rates that increase with wealth; unemployment insurance; health insurance; welfare support for the poor; laws that limit the economic power of any one corporation; regulations of trade among the states; government restrictions on unfair advertising, unsafe products, and discriminatory employment; and government subsidization of agriculture and industry.
16、社會主義經濟中的競爭
On the other hand, a purely socialist economy, even though it may be more equitable, tends toward inefficiency by neglecting individual initiative and by trying to plan every detail of the entire national economy. Without some advantages in benefits to motivate people’s efforts, productivity tends to be low. And without individuals having the freedom to make decisions on their own, short-term variations in supply and demand are difficult to respond to. Moreover, underground economies spring up to match realities of supply and demand for consumer products. Therefore, many socialist systems allow some measure of open competition and acknowledge the importance of individual initiative and ownership. Most economies throughout the world today are undergoing change—some adopting more capitalist policies and practices, and others adopting more socialist ones.
17、壟斷理論
Economists have developed a complicated body of theory to explain why the behavior of a monopoly firm differs significantly from that of a competitive firm. A monopoly company, like any other business, confronts two forces: （1）a set of demand conditions for the commodity or service it produces; and （2）a set of cost conditions that governs how much it has to pay to those who supply the resources and labor required to produce its product. Every business firm must adjust its production to the point at which it is able to maximize its profit—that is, the difference between the revenue it receives from its sales and the costs it incurs in producing the amount sold. The level of production at which it achieves its maximum profit is not necessarily the one at which the firm is getting the highest possible price for its product. The major difference between a monopoly firm and one in a competitive industry is that the monopoly will have greater control over the price it charges for its product, although this control is never absolute. The monopoly firm thus has more freedom than the competitive firm to adjust price as well as production as it strives to achieve a maximum profit.
From the viewpoint of society, monopoly leads to effects that are less desirable than those resulting from economic competition. In general, monopoly results in a smaller output of goods or services as compared with competition, and also in prices that are often higher than those in competitive industries. Another practice associated with monopoly is price discrimination, which involves charging a different price for the same goods or services to different segments of the same market.
18、壟斷及其四大產生條件
Monopoly, economic situation in which only a single seller or producer supplies a commodity or a service. For a monopoly to be effective, there must be no practical substitutes for the product or service sold, and no serious threat of the entry of a competitor into the market. This enables the seller to control the price.
One or more of the following elements are of great importance in establishing a monopoly in a particular industry: （1）control of a major resource necessary to produce a product, as was the case with bauxite in the pre-World War II aluminum industry; （2）technological capabilities that allow a single firm to produce at reasonable prices all the output of a particular commodity or service, a situation sometimes described as a “natural” monopoly; （3）exclusive control over a patent on a product or on the processes used to produce the product; and （4）a government franchise that awards a company the sole right to produce a commodity or service in a given area.
19、四大壟斷形式I：公共事業（純壟斷）
Among the various kinds of economic monopolies are public utilities, trusts, cartels, and industrial mergers.
A. Public Utilities
Pure monopolies—only a single firm in an industry—are rare in the U.S. economy, except among the public utilities. These industries produce goods and provide services vital to the public well-being, including such essentials as water, power, transport, and communications. Although such monopolies often seem to be the most effective way to supply vital public services, they must be regulated when privately owned or else be owned and operated by a public body.
20、四大壟斷形式II：信托
B. Trust
American history is replete with attempts by producers either to organize or to engage in practices that give them, in effect, monopoly power, although competition may still appear to exist. One of the earliest means used by producers to create an effective monopoly while retaining some semblance of competition was the trust. This is a device by which the real control of a company is transferred to an individual or small group by an exchange of shares of stock for trust certificates, which are issued by the individuals seeking control. The widespread abuse of this technique after the American Civil War eventually led to passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act （1890）, a law designed to make illegal all trusts and other combinations that aimed to create monopolies in restraint of interstate commerce. A similar device is the holding company, which issues its own stock shares for sale to the public and “holds” or controls other companies by owning their shares. Such an arrangement is not necessarily illegal, unless created specifically to monopolize commerce in interstate trade.
21、四大壟斷形式III：卡特爾
C. Cartels
Today perhaps the best-known form of combination is the cartel because of the widespread attention given to the activities of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC. A cartel is an organization formed by producers whose purpose is to allocate market shares, control production, and regulate prices. OPEC does all these things, but its most highly publicized acts have been to set the world price for petroleum. Cartels are illegal in the U.S.; most other countries, however—including the United Kingdom and the nations of Western Europe—have taken a more lenient view of cartels, allowing them to exist as long as their monopolistic practices do not become too outrageous.