「統一定價」與「競爭機制」的比較分析──台灣液化石油氣產業的實證

Uniform Pricing and Competitive Mechanism: A Study of Liquefied Petroleum Gas Industry

任何產業政府部門可藉由直接管制加以規範，亦可藉由市場力量所形成的競爭機制予以規範。液化石油氣產業早期因為供應與經銷階段屬於獨占市場結構，的確造成市場機制的若干限制，形成經濟效率不彰的結果，因此政府遂採行管制手段。然而，政府配合採行液化石油氣經銷商利潤的限制，以及最終價格分區管制的配套措施，消費者的權益並未受到太大的損害。液化石油氣市場解除政府的管制之後，主管機關卻忽略了配套措施的必要性，以至於產生地下分裝場、地下分銷商，進而產生市場殺價的行為。上、下游業者的殺價及事後的調整價格行為，則因屬公平交易法規範的違法行為，以致於受到競爭主管機關嚴厲的處罰，十年來處罰之金額近新台幣六億元。審酌兩種管制政策的效果之後，可以發覺政府以市場機制替代原有的直接管制政策，因欠缺妥善的配套措施，從而衍生液化石油氣市場的許多問題，例如鋼瓶未按期檢查產生社會安全危害的可能；地下分銷商、分裝場的出現，產生市場交易的失序行為，它直接間接造成業者進行聯合行為的不法行為。目的主管機關亦輕忽從業人員的再教育的重要性，致使採用市場機制管理市場時，許多業者無法適應新制觸犯公平法而受罰，其所累積的金額更令人印象深刻。衡酌液化石油氣市場兩種不同的管制制度，「競爭機制」所造成的社會成本，相對於「統一定價」的管制似乎並不便宜。政府應採用何種制度管理液化石油氣產業較為適宜，仍有再思慮的空間。

Direct control of government and competitive mechanism induced by market power are two common conduits to regulate industries. In the early phase, the supply and dealer system of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) industry belonged to a monopolistic structure, which indeed brought about several limitations for market mechanism while resulted in disadvantage of economic efficiency. Hence, the government's regulation is not only plausible but necessary. The supplementary measures of profit restraint to the LPG dealers and of territory limitation to final price implemented by government prevented serious damages for customers' interest. Since the deregulation of LPG market, the administration ignored the necessary of the supplementary measures. Illegal LPG bottling factories and distributors were emerged and led to undercutting behavior in the market. Then, the upstream and downstream industries continuously violated the Fair Trade Law. The most server punishment almost made the LPG industry become the large supporter of Fair Trade Commission. It can be found by reviewing the two regulating policies that due to the deficiency of proper supplementary measures government uses market mechanism to substitute the original control policy would cause many sequels for LPG market. For instances, security problems might be induced by the events that the LPG steel cylinders are not checked as scheduled, uncontrollable behavior of market trading induced by the emergence of illegal LPG bottling factories and distributors would directly or indirectly stimulate the happening of collusion.Furthermore, the administration also disregarded the importance of reeducation for the people who works in the related industries. The result refers to that when regulating with market mechanism many firms would not accommodate new rule easily and violate the Fair Trade Law frequently. The large amount of accumulated forfeit made deep impression for people. Gauging the two regulation systems of the LPG market, the social cost of the 'competitive mechanism' is relatively not cheaper than the 'uniform pricing'. Accordingly, there is the room to rethink the question that which mechanism is more adequate for managing the LPG industry from the viewpoint of public policy.