法国经济学家让-梯若尔因其对市场力量和监管的分析获得2014年诺贝尔经济学奖。让-梯若尔（Jean Tirole）是2007年诺贝尔经济学奖得主埃里克-马斯金的最得意弟子，世界著名的经济学大师（1990－2000年世界经济学家排名第二）。一直是诺贝尔经济学奖呼声较高的学者。在其20多年学术生涯中所作出的贡献足以令任何经济学家咋舌：300多篇高水平论文，11部专著，内容涉及经济学的各个重要领域。现担任法国图卢兹大学产业经济研究所科研所长，同时在巴黎大学， 麻省理工学院担任兼职教授，并先后在哈佛大学、斯坦福大学担任客座教授。1984年至今担任计量经济学（Econometrica）杂志副主编。 同时还是普纳思经济管理研究院学术委员。

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2014 to

 

Jean Tirole

Toulouse 1 Capitole University, France

 

“for his analysis of market power and regulation”.

 

The science of taming powerful firms

Jean Tirole is one of the most influential economists of our time. He has made important theoretical research contributions in a number of areas, but most of all he has clarified how to understand and regulate industries with a few powerful firms.

 

Many industries are dominated by a small number of large firms or a single monopoly. Left unregulated, such markets often produce socially undesirable results – prices higher than those motivated by costs, or unproductive firms that survive by blocking the entry of new and more productive ones.

 

From the mid-1980s and onwards, Jean Tirole has breathed new life into research on such market failures. His analysis of firms with market power provides a unified theory with a strong bearing on central policy questions: how should the government deal with mergers or cartels, and how should it regulate monopolies?

 

Before Tirole, researchers and policymakers sought general principles for all industries. They advocated simple policy rules, such as capping prices for monopolists and prohibiting cooperation between competitors, while permitting cooperation between firms with different positions in the value chain. Tirole showed theoretically that such rules may work well in certain conditions, but do more harm than good in others. Price caps can provide dominant firms with strong motives to reduce costs – a good thing for society – but may also permit excessive profits – a bad thing for society. Cooperation on price setting within a market is usually harmful, but cooperation regarding patent pools can benefit everyone. The merger of a firm and its supplier may encourage innovation, but may also distort competition.

 

The best regulation or competition policy should therefore be carefully adapted to every industry’s specific conditions. In a series of articles and books, Jean Tirole has presented a general framework for designing such policies and applied it to a number of industries, ranging from telecommunications to banking. Drawing on these new insights, governments can better encourage powerful firms to become more productive and, at the same time, prevent them from harming competitors and customers.