불완전 경쟁시장과 생산자 예치금제도 - 기업의 행태 및 사회적 후생에 대한 효과 분석 -

Effects of the Producer-paid Deposit-refund System of Firm Behaviors and Social Welfare Under the Imperfectly Competitive Market Structure

Previous analyses of deposit-refund systems (hereafter DRS) mosty concerned consumer-paid DRS. While there has been a trend to put more emphasis on the producers' responsibility in recycling, especilly in Europe, and the supplier-paid DRS has been enforced in Korea during the past decade, little attempt has been made to analyse rigorously the nature of the supplier-paid DRS. This paper looks into the effects of the supplier-paid DRS on firm behaviors and profits under the oligopolistic market structure. It is shown that, in the cournot model where firms strategically interact each other, when the deposit rate is high enough, firms' profit increase as the deposit rate rises. Furthermore, where the number of firms are sufficiently large, it can happen that, as the deposit rate increases, both social welfare and firms' profit improve.