A. Thatkind of dominance creates a tension between property rights and antitrust(opposing or intended to restrain trusts, monopolies, or other largecombinations of business and capital) principles. American competitionauthorities have been loth (unwilling) to compel dominant firms to grant rivalsaccess to their private property, whether physical (as in the case of telecomsnetworks ) or virtual ( as with computer code) . In their viewintellectual-property rights have to be upheld to induce firms to innovate.Patents and copyrights are the rightful prize for new inventions. Trustbusters(a federal official who seeks to dissolve business trusts) should be wary ofcompelling firms to hand over their business secrets in the name ofcompetition. B. Drawingon recent academic work, Mr. Vickers makes the case for intervention on twocounts. First, he outlines models that suggest a rival is less likely todevelop new products if it cannot share in the profits from the dominant firm’sinvention. If the leading firm is free to licence its technology on stringentterms, it curbs the profits of rivals who have to stump up. True, it spursrival firms to innovate since the prospective pay-off is greater. But onbalance, the incentive to innovate is greater where access is granted morefreely, because upfront profits are more valuable. C. Bycontrast, Europe’s trustbusters have acted to free up access to telecomsnetworks in France and Germany. Backed by the courts, they have requiredMicrosoft to make private information about its Windows operating systemavailable to rivals, who can then compete more readily in software development. D. Economicpolicy is rarely uniform on either side of the Atlantic, but the differences insome cases are exaggerated or soon narrowed. That is true of antitrust policy,where there has been a great deal of convergence. The European Commission’strustbusters tend to take a more cautious view of big global mergers, but theway such tie-ups are assessed is very similar to American practice. In thepolicing of cartels (an international combine formed esp. to regulate pricesand output in some field of business) , the commission has adopted many of themethods and models of its American cousins. E. Whichview is right? In a new paper John Vickers of Oxford University surveys theeconomics literature and concludes that a hands-off approach is far from ideal.Mr Vickers, once head of the Office of Fair Trading, Britain’s main antitrustoutfit , says that like many economists he finds himself “rowingin the mid-Atlantic” when it comes to the treatment of dominant firms. Americanpolicy is too cautious about treading on big firms’ toes but Europe’strustbusters may intervene too boldly. F. Asecond argument for reining in dominant firms is that the contest to innovatetends to be keenest where there is a neck-and-neck battle to be the dominantfirm. If market leaders are forced to license their know-how on easy terms,that reduces the pay-off from research and development (R&D) . But it alsoallows much smaller firms to catch up quickly. Although profits from any newinventions will be lower, they will be chased more aggressively whencompetitors are on a similar footing. G. Onone antitrust issue, though, the transatlantic gulf has been unusually wide:how to deal with firms with a market share so large as to dwarf their rivals.In high-tech industries, such as computing and telecoms, the power of networkeffects encourages firms to settle on an industry standard to ensure thatgadgets and software are compatible. That givers the owners of the winningstandards, such as Microsoft, a great deal of market muscle. D → 1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → 5 → F 考研阅读理解B(段落排序)作业1.docx