The 24th issue of Policy Briefing, NADS: Benefits Losses of Monopoly Industries Accounts for 5.7% GDP

Income distribution is a hot issue that everyone cares about. An important reason of income distribution inequality is the high income of monopoly industries. When studying this issue, it is necessary that income distribution effect of administrative monopolies in our country is measured from the perspective of consumption. Recently, Yue Ximing, Chang Jiang Scholar, Research Fellow of NADS and Professor of the School of Finance, was invited by the Center for Research on Government –Enterprise Relationship and Industrial Development to make a lecture and share his latest research achievements in this field. The lecture is divided into three main sections. In the first session, Professor Yue introduced the scale and distribution of consumer welfare losses caused by the monopoly prices. In his opinion, the net loss of benefits and excess profits caused by the eight monopolies such as electricity, telecommunications, petroleum, railway, aviation, finance, tobacco and salt industries, were 5.7% of the GDP of the year (2008), of which the largest was the financial sector, accounting for 3.4% of GDP and 60.6% of total net welfare loss and excess profits. In the second session, Professor Jiang Fuxiu of Business School and Deputy Professor of School of Economics and NADS Research Fellow Sun Wenkai made comments. They pointed out that the importance of the defining the monopoly industries and the problems that were overestimated or underestimated in excess profits. The third part is interaction.