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Antitrust investigations in the mobile app economy often require a definition of the relevant market of mobile apps and the evaluation of their market power. However, existing antitrust tools face significant challenges due to the non-price nature of mobile apps with multiple revenue sources, two competition margins at the mobile OS and mobile app levels, and the switching costs involved in the choice of mobile OSs. In this paper, we provide a description of the mobile app economy, including its essential components, players, and characteristics, and identify the challenges currently observed in antitrust investigations. We propose a model for mobile app users and advertisers that can address these issues and suggest a method for defining the relevant market of mobile apps and evaluating their market power, which is adaptable to markets with zero-priced products or multiple revenue sources beyond mobile apps. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.

We compare auctioning and grandfathering as allocation mechanisms of emission permits when there is a secondary market with market power and firms have private information on their own abatement technologies. Based on real-life cases such as the EU ETS, we consider a multi-unit, multi-bid uniform auction. At the auction, each firm anticipates its role in the secondary market, either as a leader or a follower. This role affects each firms’ valuation of the permits (which are not common across firms) as well as their bidding strategies and it precludes the auction from generating a cost-effective allocation of permits, as it occurs in simpler auction models. Auctioning tends to be more cost-effective than grandfathering when the firms’ abatement cost functions are sufficiently different from one another, especially if the follower has lower abatement costs than the leader and the dispersion of the marginal costs is large enough., Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN), European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Junta de Andalucía, Depto. de Análisis Económico y Economía Cuantitativa, Fac. de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, TRUE, pub

This essay conceptualizes market governance as a balance of power and discusses the implications for current debates over antitrust policy. This framework offers a way to interpret and evaluate the “neo-Brandeisian” school that views concentrated market power as a threat to democracy as well as to economic goals, such as productivity and innovation. It suggests that the government can deploy antitrust policy to alter the balance of power to promote the public welfare without necessarily impeding competition or otherwise distorting markets. And antitrust policies that constrain market power can have the double benefit of making both markets and politics more competitive.

Antitrust law is meant to promote competition by prohibiting anticompetitive business practices such as mergers and acquisitions as well as exclusionary conduct. Judicial interpretation of antitrust law has allowed dominant digital platforms to undertake anticompetitive actions without prosecution. The Sherman Antitrust Act should be amended to remove the monopoly power standard that allows firms to engage in anticompetitive conduct as long as the conduct does not create or uphold monopoly power. The amendment would make anticompetitive conduct illegal regardless of monopoly power, as long as six proof requirements are met. This would result in lessened market concentration, which would benefit technological innovation and the economy, American technological leadership, and the free flow of information.

Agricultural production grew dramatically since 1950. While this growth improved food security, it also introduced harmful tradeoffs. A few of those tradeoffs are environmental externalities and market power in food and agricultural markets. The sustainability and resilience of the modern food system require that research and policy carefully weigh the consequences associated with productivity growth. This dissertation evaluates the environmental and supply chain tradeoffs of modern agricultural production. Chapter 1 quantifies costs of nitrate contaminated drinking water, which largely results from agricultural production. Nitrate contamination of drinking water is a widespread environmental concern and threatens human health. The magnitude of the environmental health consequences depend on an individual's ability to avoid exposure. This paper uses an event-study framework to uncover the heterogeneity in avoidance behavior following Safe Drinking Water Act nitrate violations. Using weekly store-level scanner data, I estimate that consumers spend approximately $4.7 million annually on bottled water and soda to avoid nitrate contaminated drinking water. However, consumers in resource-constrained areas exhibit substantially less protective behavior. This leads to 143 additional infant deaths per year relative to areas with less-costly access to safe drinking water. These results underscore substantial costs from nitrate pollution and that these costs are disproportionately distributed to those with less ability to protect themselves.Chapter 2 calculates the groundwater impacts of drought and extreme heat in California agriculture. Adaptation to climate and weather shocks can be costly for producers, but it also may impose negative externalities on vulnerable populations. We study this in the context of groundwater in California and evaluate the effects of annual fluctuations in weather and surface water supplies on agricultural well construction and access to drinking

The electricity industry has been one of the first to face technological changes motivated by sustainability concerns. Whilst efficiency aspects of market design have tended to focus upon market power concerns, the new policy challenges emphasise sustainability. We argue that market designs need to develop remedies for market conduct integrated with regard to environmental externalities. Accordingly, we develop an incentive-based market clearing mechanism using a power network representation with a distinctive feature of incomplete information regarding generation costs. The shortcomings of price caps to mitigate market power, in this context, are overcome with the proposed mechanism., QC 20230530

Purpose of Review So-called Green New Deals aim to decarbonise the power sector via market-based instruments. Consequently, engineering-economic models for analysing the sustainable-energy transition have proliferated. This reviewcategorises existing approaches and identifies areas for extending the state of the art. Recent Findings We cluster the extant literature into two groups: engineering/operational research (M1) and environmentaleconomics (M2). While M1 focuses on the power sector’s technical and spatio-temporal aspects, M2’s emphasis is onincentives and externalities. Depending on the nature of the research question, either perspective (or both) may be suitable. Summary Since the envisaged electrification of the wider economy implies tighter coupling between formerly distinct sectors,e.g., power and heat, both M1 and M2 will have to adapt to the new paradigm in terms of methodology and application areas.Here, eliciting coordinating mechanisms, enhancing algorithms for solving hierarchical models, soft linking bottom-up andtop-down models, and crafting robust environmental policy in face of uncertainty over externalities are some of the vistas forfuture research.

Ambitious climate packages promote the integration of variable renewable energy (VRE) and electrification of the economy. For the power sector, such a transformation means the emergence of so-called prosumers, i.e., agents that both consume and produce electricity. Due to their inflexible VRE output and flexible demand, prosumers will potentially add endogenous net sales with seasonal patterns to the power system. With its vast hydro reservoirs and ample transmission capacity, the Nordic region is seemingly well positioned to cope with such intermittent VRE output. However, the increased requirement for flexibility may be leveraged by incumbent producers to manipulate prices. Via a Nash-Cournot model with a representation of the Nordic region’s spatio-temporal features and reservoir volumes, we examine how hydro producers’ ability to manipulate electricity prices through temporal arbitrage is affected by (i) VRE-enabled prosumers and (ii) the latter plus a high CO22 price. We find that hydro reservoirs could exploit prosumers’ patterns of net sales to conduct temporal arbitrage more effectively, viz., by targeting periods in which prosumers are net buyers (net sellers) to withhold (to “dump”) water. Meanwhile, a higher CO22 price would further enhance hydro reservoirs’ market power because flexible price-taking thermal plants would be unable to ramp up production in order to counter such producers’ strategy to target VRE’s intermittency. Hence, in spite of a flexible demand side to complement additional intermittent VRE output, strategic hydro producers may still exacerbate price manipulation in a future power sector via more tailored exercise of market power.

This paper develops a model in which a handful of dominant banks mutually engage in head-to-head rivalry while acting as loan-quantity-setting leaders vis-à-vis numerous fringe banks. Under the most likely calibration of parameters governing behavior of the two groups, we find that increases in capital requirements substantially reduce equilibrium loan volumes and raise the market retail loan rate, while increases in tax rates tend to raise the market loan rate but not in a way that significantly alters aggregate lending. Key parameters influencing outcomes in alternative calibrations are the number of dominant banks and the market loan demand elasticity.

In Magill, the Court of Justice of the European Union concluded that broadcasters were abusing their dominant positions by blocking a would-be competitor on the television-guide market from access to TV listing information. It is submitted in this article that the subsequent reinterpretation of Magill as an essential facilities case has its weaknesses, and that the ruling can be better explained by reference to the hold-up problem and a dynamic view of competition.

Climate packages envisage decarbonization of the power system and electrification of the wider economy via variable renewable energy (VRE). These trends facilitate the rise of aggregator-enabled prosumers and engender demand for flexibility. By exploiting conducive geography, e.g., in the Nordic region, hydro reservoirs can mitigate VRE's intermittency. Nevertheless, hydro producers may leverage this increased need for flexibility to exert market power through temporal arbitrage. Using a Nash-Cournot model, we examine how aggregator-enabled prosumers with endogenous loads and VRE capacity interact with other agents to affect market outcomes. Based on Nordic data, we find that hydro producers enhance their market power by shifting their production away from periods in which prosumers are net buyers and "dumping" their output during periods in which prosumers are net sellers. Hence, jurisdictions that rely upon (hydro) storage to integrate VRE from prosumers will need to be wary of incumbent firms' incentives to manipulate prices.

Decarbonisation of the Nordic power sector entails substantial variable renewable energy (VRE) adoption. While Nordic hydropower reservoirs can mitigate VRE output's intermittency, strategic hydro producers may leverage increased flexibility requirements to exert market power. Using a Nash-Cournot model, we find that even the current Nordic power system could yield modest gains from strategic reservoir operations regardless of a prohibition on "spilling" water to increase prices. Instead, strategic hydro producers could shift generation from peak to off-peak seasons. Such temporal arbitrage becomes more attractive under a climate package with a €100/t CO2 price and doubled VRE capacity. Since the package increases generation variability, lowers average prices, and makes fossil-fuelled plants unprofitable, strategic hydro producers face lower opportunity costs in shifting output from peak to off-peak seasons and encounter muted responses from price-taking fossil-fuelled plants. Hence, a climate package that curtails CO2 emissions may also bolster strategic hydro producers' leverage.

Perfectly operating markets only exist in theory. Market failures are known to not only inhibit the proper functioning of the market, but also affect sustainability and thus a sustainability transition. In this regard, much attention has been paid to externalities or missing markets, even though these are not the only market failures. In this paper, we argue that market power and its relationship with sustainability has been neglected, despite the fact that, back in 1931, Hotelling indicated the connection between the two concepts. However, research that has been dealing with this connection has not been comprehensive and has only looked at one aspect of sustainability and market power. Due to the rising relevance of market power as well as of sustainability concerns, the connection between the two deserves thorough attention. Accordingly, we propose initiating a new interdisciplinary research agenda to comprehensively analyze the complex relationship between market power and sustainability.

The increasing penetration of inflexible and fluctuating renewable energy generation is often accompanied by a sequential market setup, including a day-ahead spot market that balances forecasted supply and demand with an hourly time resolution and a balancing market in which flexible generation handles unexpected imbalances closer to real-time and with a higher time resolution. Market characteristics such as time resolution, the time of market offering and the information available at this time, price elasticities of demand and the number of market participants, allow producers to exercise market power to different degrees. To capture this, we study oligopolistic spot and balancing markets with Cournot competition, and formulate two stochastic equilibrium models for the sequential markets. The first is an open-loop model which we formulate and solve as a complementarity problem. The second is a closed-loop model that accounts for the sequence of market clearings, but is computationally more demanding. Via optimality conditions, the result is an equilibrium problem with equilibrium constraints which we solve by an iterative procedure. When compared to the closed-loop solution, our results show that the open-loop problem overestimates the ability to exercise market power unless the market allows for speculation. In the presence of a speculator, the open-loop formulation forces spot and balancing market prices to be equal in expectation and indicates substantial profit reductions, whereas speculation has less severe impact in the closed-loop problem. We use the closed-loop model to further analyse market power issues with a higher time resolution and limited access to the balancing market.

Why are banks’ asset–liability decisions interdependent, and why do we observe both large and small banks? We introduce convex costs in a model with both horizontal and vertical quality differentiation, finding that, as long as a single bank spends on quality attributes, strategic quality rivalry causes the portfolio decisions of all banks to be interconnected, generating portfolio interdependence regarding choices among assets and liabilities at each bank, including banks that forego vertical quality provision. In addition, diseconomies of scale allow banks to remain profitable at different scales of operations.

This book describes the latest microeconomic concepts and operations research (OR) techniques needed to comprehend the design and operation of power markets, as well as the actions of their agents: producers, consumers, operators, and regulators. This is critical when it comes to addressing a constantly evolving power system environment that incorporates an increasing number of no-marginal-cost renewable sources, increasingly competitive storage facilities, increasingly responsive demands, and widespread communication channels that allow distributed decision-making. Such evolving environments call for a re-examination of the microeconomic concepts and OR techniques required by graduate students and practitioners in the electric energy field. This accessible, tutorial-style book features numerous illustrative examples to help readers grasp the economic concepts and OR procedures used by power market professionals. The authors explain these concepts and procedures and present a vision of a renewable-dominated marketplace. Each chapter also includes exercises.

This dissertation consists of two essays that explore methods to analyze experimental designs in economics, and a third essay that investigates the effects of the pandemic on the market power and profitability of publicly-traded US firms. The first chapter analyzes a common experimental design in applied economics, namely clustered paired experiments. In this design, randomization units, say villages, are matched into pairs, and one unit of each pair is randomly assigned to treatment. To estimate the treatment effect, researchers often regress their outcome on the treatment and pair fixed effects, clustering standard errors at the unit-of-randomization level. We show that the variance estimator in this regression may be severely downward biased: under constant treatment effect, its expectation equals 1/2 of the true variance. Instead, researchers should cluster at the pair level. Using simulations, we show that those results extend to clustered stratified experiments with few units per strata.The second chapter provides asymptotically valid tests for the null hypothesis of no treatment effect heterogeneity. Importantly, I consider the presence of heterogeneity that is not explained by observed characteristics, or so-called idiosyncratic heterogeneity. When examining this heterogeneity, common statistical tests encounter a nuisance parameter problem in the average treatment effect which renders the asymptotic distribution of the test statistic dependent on that parameter. I propose an asymptotically valid test that circumvents the estimation of that parameter using the empirical characteristic function. A simulation study illustrates not only the test's validity but its higher power in rejecting a false null as compared to current tests. Furthermore, I show the method's usefulness through its application to a microfinance experiment in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this experiment and for outcomes related to loan take-up and self-employment, the tests suggest that treat

Minimum efficiency standards for products such as appliances are economically efficient when they correct a market failure. Negative ramifications of these standards, particularly for credit constrained or low-income consumers, such as increased prices or decreased choice, are contingent on the pricing behavior of suppliers. We use market point of sales data to estimate the change in price and efficiency of clothes washers following the change in United States minimum efficiency standards in 2004 and 2007, differentiated by market segment. With a relatively narrow confidence interval, the average price of the baseline market segment did not change significantly concurrent with either the 2004 or 2007 standard change, while efficiency of these products increased by 30%, resulting in significant financial savings for consumers of the least expensive baseline products. The highest efficiency products experienced a significant drop in price and increase in efficiency as well, particularly following the 2007 standard change. The results suggest that the effect of this increase in minimum efficiency standards for clothes washers was beneficial to all consumers, but particularly those with lower incomes or renters. Low-income consumers were not priced out of the market, but rather benefited particularly. We offer discussion of potential explanations of these findings.

The extant research on supply chain information sharing under wholesale pricing often assumes a model where the manufacturer can unilaterally set any wholesale price, and the retailer decides retail quantity or price while taking the wholesale price as given. Whereas this model may actually reflect the relative market power in some situations, its implementation misses out on certain win-win opportunities that could arise from information sharing. We propose a new wholesale pricing mechanism that promotes information sharing between a relatively weaker retailer and a more powerful manufacturer such that both parties become better off. The novel feature of the new mechanism is an extra stage of interaction, which happens before the retailer's information sharing decision: at the very outset the manufacturer and the retailer reach a contractual agreement on an upper bound which the wholesale price will not exceed if the retailer shares his information. This new, easily implementable, mechanism can be a win-win for both supply chain firms. In other words, facing market uncertainty, the manufacturer, while having the market power to dictate the wholesale price, can gain from a contractual restriction on the exercise of that power in order to induce the retailer, who is in a weaker position, to share useful demand information.

We examine how the market power of credit rating agencies (CRAs) affects their rating standards. Using a global sample across 26 countries from 1994 to 2019, we find that greater market power of global CRAs, measured by their country-level market shares, is associated with stricter corporate ratings. In addition, the increase in global CRAs' market shares contributes to the tightening trend in their credit ratings worldwide. Exploiting the NRSRO designation of local CRAs in Japan, we find that global CRAs issue more inflated ratings following a decline in their market power. Further, global CRAs' greater market power is associated with timelier ratings, fewer missed defaults, but more false warnings. Collectively, our findings suggest that global rating agencies' market power leads to stricter rating standards and timelier ratings by strengthening the agencies’ reputation concerns, but at the expense of increased false warnings.

This dissertation consists of two essays that explore methods to analyze experimental designs in economics, and a third essay that investigates the effects of the pandemic on the market power and profitability of publicly-traded US firms. The first chapter analyzes a common experimental design in applied economics, namely clustered paired experiments. In this design, randomization units, say villages, are matched into pairs, and one unit of each pair is randomly assigned to treatment. To estimate the treatment effect, researchers often regress their outcome on the treatment and pair fixed effects, clustering standard errors at the unit-of-randomization level. We show that the variance estimator in this regression may be severely downward biased: under constant treatment effect, its expectation equals 1/2 of the true variance. Instead, researchers should cluster at the pair level. Using simulations, we show that those results extend to clustered stratified experiments with few units per strata.The second chapter provides asymptotically valid tests for the null hypothesis of no treatment effect heterogeneity. Importantly, I consider the presence of heterogeneity that is not explained by observed characteristics, or so-called idiosyncratic heterogeneity. When examining this heterogeneity, common statistical tests encounter a nuisance parameter problem in the average treatment effect which renders the asymptotic distribution of the test statistic dependent on that parameter. I propose an asymptotically valid test that circumvents the estimation of that parameter using the empirical characteristic function. A simulation study illustrates not only the test's validity but its higher power in rejecting a false null as compared to current tests. Furthermore, I show the method's usefulness through its application to a microfinance experiment in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this experiment and for outcomes related to loan take-up and self-employment, the tests suggest that treat

We examine how the market power of credit rating agencies (CRAs) affects their rating standards. Using a global sample across 26 countries from 1994 to 2019, we find that greater market power of global CRAs, measured by their country-level market shares, is associated with stricter corporate ratings. In addition, the increase in global CRAs' market shares contributes to the tightening trend in their credit ratings worldwide. Exploiting the NRSRO designation of local CRAs in Japan, we find that global CRAs issue more inflated ratings following a decline in their market power. Further, global CRAs' greater market power is associated with timelier ratings, fewer missed defaults, but more false warnings. Collectively, our findings suggest that global rating agencies' market power leads to stricter rating standards and timelier ratings by strengthening the agencies’ reputation concerns, but at the expense of increased false warnings. © 2021 The Author(s)

We introduce asymmetries across platforms in the linear model of competing two-sided platforms with singlehoming on both sides and fully characterize the price equilibrium. We identify market environments in which one platform has a larger market share on both sides while obtaining a lower profit than the other platform. This is compatible with higher price-cost margins on one or both sides, noting that in the latter case one margin must be negative. Our finding raises further doubts on using market shares as a measure of market power in platform markets.

This thesis investigates different volatility risk measures, interdependencies between the risk measures and macroeconomic determinants, and the connection between systematic risk and market power in financial markets. In Chapter 1, I introduce the overall concept of the thesis and present an overview of the subsequent chapters. In Chapter 2, we comprehensively examine the volatility term structures in commodity markets. We model state-dependent spillovers in principal components (PCs) of the volatility term structures of different commodities, as well as that of the equity market. We detect strong economic links and a substantial interconnectedness of the volatility term structures of commodities. Accounting for intra-commodity-market spillovers significantly improves out-of-sample forecasts of the components of the volatility term structure. Spillovers following macroeconomic news announcements account for a large proportion of this forecast power. There thus seems to be substantial information transmission between different commodity markets. The option-implied variance is calculated based on the entire option surface. Option-implied tail risk represents only a proportion of the left tail (or right tail) of the option surface. As for the calculation of the variance there are a plethora of tail risk measures to choose from, to evaluate the different tail risk measures. We compare them in Chapter 3. It comprehensively investigates the usefulness of the tail risk measures proposed in the literature. We evaluate the tail risk measures on the basis of their statistical and economic validity. Our main conclusion is that the option-implied measure of Bollserslev and Todorov (2011b) outperforms all others. It performs well for all tests and can predict not only the occurrence but also the size of future crash events. In addition, the measure is priced in the market: it predicts returns both in the time-series and in the cross-section. Finally, it also has an impact on re

Antitrust laws are concerned with controlling market power. In the course of history, the development of antitrust systems of market power control in the US and in the European Union (EU) has not followed a straight path. Legal practice, political ideology, and developments in economics have shaped an overcomplicated and undertheorized body of doctrine in relation to market power. Substantial ambiguity surrounds the definition, proof, and prevention of market power that deserves to be subject to antitrust law. By comparison and historical analysis, the present study seeks to shed some clarity on the issue.

EU competition law has a sustainability gap, particularly when it comes to enforcing Article 102 TFEU as a ‘sword’ to prohibit dominant undertakings’ unsustainable conduct. In this article, we ask whether EU competition law can and should be part of a holistic EU solution to the climate crisis and how it can contribute to ensuring that our social, economic, and ecological systems are not entrenched into further perpetuating and mutually reinforcing crises. By using EU constitutional theories of ‘mainstreaming’, we argue for the inclusion of environmental and social sustainability goals in those that are pursued by EU competition law. With research that cuts across law and socioecological studies, we offer an original and unique perspective that identifies a relation between market power and business practices that harm people and planet. We do this by demonstrating empirically that undertakings that have in the past been found to be dominant, also engage in unsustainable business practices. This relation is significant, as it demonstrates that addressing unsustainable business practices through Article 102 TFEU is not only a theoretical possibility mandated by EU constitutional law. It is a real opportunity to address environmental and social injustices and thereby contribute to tackling the most important existential threat facing humanity, climate change.

Antitrust laws are concerned with controlling market power. In the course of history, the development of antitrust systems of market power control in the US and in the European Union (EU) has not followed a straight path. Legal practice, political ideology, and developments in economics have shaped an overcomplicated and undertheorized body of doctrine in relation to market power. Substantial ambiguity surrounds the definition, proof, and prevention of market power that deserves to be subject to antitrust law. By comparison and historical analysis, the present study seeks to shed some clarity on the issue.

We examine how the market power of credit rating agencies (CRAs) affects their rating standards. Using a global sample across 26 countries from 1994 to 2019, we find that greater market power of global CRAs, measured by their country-level market shares, is associated with stricter corporate ratings. In addition, the increase in global CRAs' market shares contributes to the tightening trend in their credit ratings worldwide. Exploiting the NRSRO designation of local CRAs in Japan, we find that global CRAs issue more inflated ratings following a decline in their market power. Further, global CRAs' greater market power is associated with timelier ratings, fewer missed defaults, but more false warnings. Collectively, our findings suggest that global rating agencies' market power leads to stricter rating standards and timelier ratings by strengthening the agencies’ reputation concerns, but at the expense of increased false warnings. © 2021 The Author(s)

A recent literature argues that the rise in aggregate markups is due to economic activity reallocating toward high-markup firms rather than an increase in firm-level markups. I show that this result is biased by three types of measurement error. First, standard decomposition methods estimate a positive reallocation effect even when the allocation does not change. Second, firm-level markups are mismeasured when the production function is misspecified. If this is the case, the decomposition can give opposite results depending on whether actual or measured markups are used. Third, the decomposition is sensitive to measurement error of the variables sales and costs. Correcting for each type of measurement error suggests that the reallocation effect is smaller than previously thought and perhaps even zero or negative. Moreover, correcting for measurement error of sales lowers the estimated sales-weighted average markup, and I find that the estimated increase in the sales-weighted markup over the last 60 years in Compustat is in its entirety due to a rise in measurement error. The cost-weighted average markup is not affected by measurement error and is therefore a more robust estimate of market power.

In light of the organizational dynamics of services of economic interest, the regulation of municipal solid waste management is a critical issue to deal with so as to achieve sustainability goals in the coming decades. The European circular economy targets limit the share of municipal waste in landfills to a maximum of 10% by 2035. Consequently, waste-to-energy plants may temporarily become the primary option for residual unsorted waste. The municipal waste management chain comprises two consequential stages: collection and transport, and the treatment and disposal stage, which characterizes as an oligopolistic market structure. After defining the relevant market and calculating market concentration measures, we analyze market power in the treatment and disposal of non-recyclable mixed waste, also known as residual waste. Our analyses are based on empirical data using well-known market concentration indices such as the Herfindahl–Hirschman index and concentration ratios. We report the results of three different market concentration scenarios based on alternative geographic and product market definitions. Considering only waste-to-energy as a product market, we present a situation of moderate concentration, typically involving the attention of competition authorities. On the contrary, considering both options as a single product market, no relevant evidence emerges due to the significant share of waste sent to landfills in 2019, i.e., 20.1% of the total municipal solid waste generated in Italy. Implications for future studies consist of new detailed information on the municipal waste treatment market structure in one of the leading European countries that may prompt comparative studies. Policy implications are derived from the possibility of taking cues from this paper to envisage appropriate regulatory models for an evolving sector in which market spaces are increasing.

Why has US income inequality surged to unprecedented heights since the 1970s? The rise in inequality was not simply the natural result of differential rates of return but was powerfully driven by politics and policy. This article explores the underlying mechanisms with a focus on market governance, including corporate governance, financial regulation, labor relations, antitrust, sector-specific regulation, and intellectual property rights. Firms and individuals actively shaped market governance in their own favor and then took advantage of that favorable governance in the marketplace. This “inequality snowball” was particularly pronounced in the United States because firms were more aggressive in their business and political strategies and because the political system delivered more winner-take-all policy outcomes than the more consensual political systems of continental Europe and Japan.

My dissertation leverages electricity data for an economic investigation of three disparate topics: the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic; the implications of government ownership on the exercise of market power in the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM); and, the unintended consequences of US Clean Air Act regulation on coal boilers.First, we use high-frequency data on electricity consumption to demonstrate the effect of COVID restrictions on business activity and the mitigating effects of federal support programs---including, Economic Injury Disaster Loans and the Paycheck Protection Program. We find that COVID-mandated business closures led to a 48 to 71 kwh reduction in daily consumption, corresponding to 13\% to 20\% drop compared to pre-pandemic use. While all firms reduced electricity consumption on average, these reductions are significantly less pronounced for firms that received a federal loan or grant.Next, we study the intertwined effects of government ownership and market power in the context of the Australian NEM. In particular, we focus on the 2017 direction to place downward pressure on wholesale prices given by the Queensland Government to one of its government-owned generators, Stanwell Corp. We base our analysis on a benchmark model, which estimates counterfactual prices under the assumption of perfect competition. The comparison of actual market outcomes with simulations suggests that the exercise of market power by Queensland generators during high-demand periods decreased after the issuing of the direction. However, we find no evidence of government intervention affecting markups at lower levels of demand.Finally, we study vintage differentiation in the context of New Source Review---a set of regulations passed within the US Clean Air Act imposing costly sulfur dioxide abatement requirements on new units but not existing ones. We analyze how this differential treatment affected the utilization and retirement of coal boilers. We find tha

Strong online platforms, such as Facebook, Amazon and Google, pose new obstacles in the field of EU competition law. For example, the process of assessing dominance is generally divided into two steps: (i) defining the market and estimating the undertakings’ market shares and (ii) analysis of ‘other factors’ that are indicative of market power. However, since online platforms differ considerably in nature from most other markets, the application process and applicability of these two steps may vary. Therefore, this thesis aims to describe and analyse how dominance is assessed on online platforms with emphasis on when online platforms, because of their unique nature, must be approached differently. In conclusion, a large market share may not be indicative of market power on online platforms. As a result, competition authorities must adapt by paying attention to new ‘other factors’ that have emerged in relation to online platforms. For example, network effects seem to be the root of many substantial barriers to entry and expansion. On the other hand, multi-homing can generally be assumed to be an ‘other factor’ capable of reducing market power. Moreover, the mere possession of large amounts of quality data, and the ability to efficiently collect, process and utilise data, can facilitate increased market power under certain circumstances. Network effects, multi-homing and data as ‘other factors’ should advisably be considered together when assessing dominance since they are closely related. However, new competition law instruments and tools, such as the DMA, may be essential to efficiently confront the new challenges that arise as a consequence of online platforms’ unique characteristics.

This article examines the effect of market power on the price transmission from producer to wholesaler in the Chilean beef and pork industries. Conjectural elasticities were used as a proxy for market power and a Threshold Error Correction Model (TECM) with three regimes was estimated to distinguish price adjustment behavior in relation to long-run equilibrium. The results indicate that market power has a significant impact in the bovine sector when prices are in a decreasing phase. In this phase, bovine wholesalers can exercise market power to slow down the price adjustment downwards and retain higher profit margins for longer. The symmetry hypothesis in the long-run adjustment is rejected in cattle when market power is incorporated and does not reject when it is ignored in the model specification, suggesting asymmetric price transmission between the low and high regimes. This result reinforces the idea that wholesale market power produces asymmetries in the adjustment of prices that are regime-dependent only in the bovine sector., Cet article examine l'effet du pouvoir de marché sur la transmission des prix de gros au producteur dans les industries chiliennes de la viande de bœuf et de porc. Des élasticités conjecturales ont été utilisées pour représenter le pouvoir de marché, puis un modèle de correction d'erreur de seuil (TECM) a été estimé à partir de trois régimes, afin de distinguer le comportement d'ajustement des prix par rapport à l'équilibre de long terme. Les résultats indiquent que le pouvoir de marché a un impact significatif sur le secteur bovin lorsque les prix sont à la baisse. Dans cette phase descendante, les grossistes peuvent exercer un pouvoir de marché pour ralentir l'ajustement des prix et avoir ainsi des marges de profits plus élevées à long terme. Dans la spécification du modèle, l'hypothèse de symétrie à long terme est rejetée pour le secteur bovin lorsque le pouvoir de marché est incorporé et non rejetée lorsqu'elle est ignorée. Tout ceci suggère l’existence d’une transmission asymétrique entre les régimes bas et haut. Ce résultat renforce l'idée selon laquelle le pouvoir du marché grossiste entraîne des asymétries dans l'ajustement des prix qui ne dépendent du régime que dans le secteur bovin., Este artículo examina el efecto del poder de mercado sobre la transmisión de precios productor-mayorista en las industrias de carne bovina y porcina chilena. Se utilizaron elasticidades conjeturales para representar el poder de mercado y se estimó un modelo de corrección de errores por umbral (TECM, por sus siglas en inglés) con tres regímenes para distinguir el comportamiento de ajuste de precios con relación al equilibrio de largo plazo. Los resultados indican que el poder de mercado tiene impacto significativo en el sector bovino cuando los precios se hallan en fase decreciente. En dicha fase, los mayoristas pueden ejercer poder de mercado para ralentizar el ajuste de precios y conservar márgenes de ganancia mayores durante más tiempo. La hipótesis de simetría de largo plazo es rechazada en el sector bovino cuando se incorpora el poder de mercado y no rechazada cuando se ignora en la especificación del modelo, sugiriendo transmisión asimétrica entre los regímenes bajo y alto. Este resultado, refuerza la idea que el poder de mercado mayorista produce asimetrías en el ajuste de precios que son régimen-dependientes sólo en el sector bovino.

In western economies, a gradual increase in the degree of market concentration has been observed in recent decades, together with the emergence and consolidation of companies with significant positions of economic power. This situation is especially evident in digital markets. The emergence and consolidation of large technological platforms has rekindled a long dormant discussion about the values that the antitrust law is responsible for promoting and protecting, bringing antitrust law back to the political arena and, in the case of the United States, to its own origins., En las economías occidentales se ha venido observando en las últimas décadas un paulatino incremento del grado de concentración de los mercados unido al surgimiento y consolidación de empresas con significativas posiciones de poder económico. Esta situación es especialmente evidente en los mercados digitales. La aparición y consolidación de las grandes plataformas tecnológicas ha reavivado una discusión largo tiempo adormecida sobre los valores que a las normas de defensa de la libre competencia compete promover y tutelar, volviendo a traer el derecho antitrust a la arena política y, en el caso estadounidense, a sus propios orígenes.

How important is the exercise of classical monopsony power against labor for the level of wages and labor's share? We examine this in the context of China and India – two large, rapidly-growing developing economies. Using theory, we develop a novel method to quantify how wages are affected by the exertion of market power in labor markets. The theory guides the measurement of labor “markdowns,” i.e., the gap between wage and the value of the marginal product of labor, and the method examines how they comove with local labor market share. Applying this method, we find that market power substantially lowers labor's share of income: by up to 11 percentage points in China and 13 percentage points in India. This impact has fallen over time in both countries, however.

This article examines the effect of market power on the price transmission from producer to wholesaler in the Chilean beef and pork industries. Conjectural elasticities were used as a proxy for market power and a Threshold Error Correction Model (TECM) with three regimes was estimated to distinguish price adjustment behavior in relation to long-run equilibrium. The results indicate that market power has a significant impact in the bovine sector when prices are in a decreasing phase. In this phase, bovine wholesalers can exercise market power to slow down the price adjustment downwards and retain higher profit margins for longer. The symmetry hypothesis in the long-run adjustment is rejected in cattle when market power is incorporated and does not reject when it is ignored in the model specification, suggesting asymmetric price transmission between the low and high regimes. This result reinforces the idea that wholesale market power produces asymmetries in the adjustment of prices that are regime-dependent only in the bovine sector., Cet article examine l'effet du pouvoir de marché sur la transmission des prix de gros au producteur dans les industries chiliennes de la viande de bœuf et de porc. Des élasticités conjecturales ont été utilisées pour représenter le pouvoir de marché, puis un modèle de correction d'erreur de seuil (TECM) a été estimé à partir de trois régimes, afin de distinguer le comportement d'ajustement des prix par rapport à l'équilibre de long terme. Les résultats indiquent que le pouvoir de marché a un impact significatif sur le secteur bovin lorsque les prix sont à la baisse. Dans cette phase descendante, les grossistes peuvent exercer un pouvoir de marché pour ralentir l'ajustement des prix et avoir ainsi des marges de profits plus élevées à long terme. Dans la spécification du modèle, l'hypothèse de symétrie à long terme est rejetée pour le secteur bovin lorsque le pouvoir de marché est incorporé et non rejetée lorsqu'elle est ignorée. Tout ceci suggère l’existence d’une transmission asymétrique entre les régimes bas et haut. Ce résultat renforce l'idée selon laquelle le pouvoir du marché grossiste entraîne des asymétries dans l'ajustement des prix qui ne dépendent du régime que dans le secteur bovin., Este artículo examina el efecto del poder de mercado sobre la transmisión de precios productor-mayorista en las industrias de carne bovina y porcina chilena. Se utilizaron elasticidades conjeturales para representar el poder de mercado y se estimó un modelo de corrección de errores por umbral (TECM, por sus siglas en inglés) con tres regímenes para distinguir el comportamiento de ajuste de precios con relación al equilibrio de largo plazo. Los resultados indican que el poder de mercado tiene impacto significativo en el sector bovino cuando los precios se hallan en fase decreciente. En dicha fase, los mayoristas pueden ejercer poder de mercado para ralentizar el ajuste de precios y conservar márgenes de ganancia mayores durante más tiempo. La hipótesis de simetría de largo plazo es rechazada en el sector bovino cuando se incorpora el poder de mercado y no rechazada cuando se ignora en la especificación del modelo, sugiriendo transmisión asimétrica entre los regímenes bajo y alto. Este resultado, refuerza la idea que el poder de mercado mayorista produce asimetrías en el ajuste de precios que son régimen-dependientes sólo en el sector bovino.

In western economies, a gradual increase in the degree of market concentration has been observed in recent decades, together with the emergence and consolidation of companies with significant positions of economic power. This situation is especially evident in digital markets. The emergence and consolidation of large technological platforms has rekindled a long dormant discussion about the values that the antitrust law is responsible for promoting and protecting, bringing antitrust law back to the political arena and, in the case of the United States, to its own origins., En las economías occidentales se ha venido observando en las últimas décadas un paulatino incremento del grado de concentración de los mercados unido al surgimiento y consolidación de empresas con significativas posiciones de poder económico. Esta situación es especialmente evidente en los mercados digitales. La aparición y consolidación de las grandes plataformas tecnológicas ha reavivado una discusión largo tiempo adormecida sobre los valores que a las normas de defensa de la libre competencia compete promover y tutelar, volviendo a traer el derecho antitrust a la arena política y, en el caso estadounidense, a sus propios orígenes.

In western economies, a gradual increase in the degree of market concentration has been observed in recent decades, together with the emergence and consolidation of companies with significant positions of economic power. This situation is especially evident in digital markets. The emergence and consolidation of large technological platforms has rekindled a long dormant discussion about the values that the antitrust law is responsible for promoting and protecting, bringing antitrust law back to the political arena and, in the case of the United States, to its own origins., En las economías occidentales se ha venido observando en las últimas décadas un paulatino incremento del grado de concentración de los mercados unido al surgimiento y consolidación de empresas con significativas posiciones de poder económico. Esta situación es especialmente evidente en los mercados digitales. La aparición y consolidación de las grandes plataformas tecnológicas ha reavivado una discusión largo tiempo adormecida sobre los valores que a las normas de defensa de la libre competencia compete promover y tutelar, volviendo a traer el derecho antitrust a la arena política y, en el caso estadounidense, a sus propios orígenes.

В современных условиях динамичной изменчивости окружающей среды и ожесточающейся конкурентной борьбы хостелы вынуждены фокусировать свое внимание не только на внутреннем состоянии дел компании, но и вырабатывать долгосрочную стратегию поведения, которая позволяла бы им оперативно реагировать на изменения, которые происходят в их окружении. Для анализа микроуровня внешней среды организации используется конкурентный анализ по модели пяти сил Портера (интенсивность конкуренции среди действующих игроков, угроза появления товаров-субститутов, угроза появления новых игроков на рынке, рыночная власть поставщиков и рыночная власть потребителей). В статье проведен анализ по модели Портера и произведена оценка факторов, влияющих на деятельность хостелов в Одинцово., In currently dynamic environment and fierce competition, hostels are forced to focus not only on the internal state of affairs of the company, but also on developing a long-term strategy of behavior that would allow them to quickly respond to changes in their environment. To analyze the micro-level of the organization's external environment, a competitive analysis is used according to the Porter's five forces model (the intensity of competition among existing players, the threat of the appearance of substitute goods, the threat of new players on the market, the bargaining power of suppliers and the bargaining power of consumers). The article analyzes the Porter's model and assesses the factors that influence hostels’ activities in Odintsovo.

Summary of Banco de España Working Paper no. 2033

How important is the exercise of classical monopsony power against labor for the level of wages and labor's share? We examine this in the context of China and India – two large, rapidly-growing developing economies. Using theory, we develop a novel method to quantify how wages are affected by the exertion of market power in labor markets. The theory guides the measurement of labor “markdowns,” i.e., the gap between wage and the value of the marginal product of labor, and the method examines how they comove with local labor market share. Applying this method, we find that market power substantially lowers labor's share of income: by up to 11 percentage points in China and 13 percentage points in India. This impact has fallen over time in both countries, however. © 2021

My dissertation leverages electricity data for an economic investigation of three disparate topics: the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic; the implications of government ownership on the exercise of market power in the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM); and, the unintended consequences of US Clean Air Act regulation on coal boilers.First, we use high-frequency data on electricity consumption to demonstrate the effect of COVID restrictions on business activity and the mitigating effects of federal support programs---including, Economic Injury Disaster Loans and the Paycheck Protection Program. We find that COVID-mandated business closures led to a 48 to 71 kwh reduction in daily consumption, corresponding to 13\% to 20\% drop compared to pre-pandemic use. While all firms reduced electricity consumption on average, these reductions are significantly less pronounced for firms that received a federal loan or grant.Next, we study the intertwined effects of government ownership and market power in the context of the Australian NEM. In particular, we focus on the 2017 direction to place downward pressure on wholesale prices given by the Queensland Government to one of its government-owned generators, Stanwell Corp. We base our analysis on a benchmark model, which estimates counterfactual prices under the assumption of perfect competition. The comparison of actual market outcomes with simulations suggests that the exercise of market power by Queensland generators during high-demand periods decreased after the issuing of the direction. However, we find no evidence of government intervention affecting markups at lower levels of demand.Finally, we study vintage differentiation in the context of New Source Review---a set of regulations passed within the US Clean Air Act imposing costly sulfur dioxide abatement requirements on new units but not existing ones. We analyze how this differential treatment affected the utilization and retirement of coal boilers. We find tha

Several interconnected power systems worldwide have largely thermal and hydro production along with CO2 cap-and-trade (C&T) systems and variable renewable energy sources (VRES). C&T policies increase VRES generation, and socially optimal storage deployment could integrate VRES output. However, hydro reservoirs may be used strategically due to market power. We investigate these distortions and assess measures for their mitigation via a bottom-up equilibrium model of New York and Quebec. In particular, we find evidence that hydro producers shift water between seasons to manipulate electricity prices even under a net-hydro production constraint. Alternative regulation covering net imports as well as net-hydro production limits such temporal arbitrage but enables firms with both thermal generation and pumped-hydro storage to exercise spatial arbitrage. We demonstrate that these distortions will be exacerbated under more stringent C&T policies because price-taking thermal producers are less able to respond to price signals.

Cílem práce je analyzovat tržní sílu nejvýznamnějších pojišťoven a její vztah k relevantním finančním ukazatelům. První část práce je zaměřena na vymezení základních pojmů z oblasti pojišťovnictví. Druhou částí práce je vymezení přístupů k měření tržní síly. Následně je provedena literární rešerše odborných článků a vědeckých studií zabývajících se daným tématem. V poslední části práce je provedena analýza tržní síly pojistného sektoru jako celku a analýza nejvýznamnějších pojišťoven. Dále jsou testovány vztahy mezi koncentrací a vybranými finančními ukazateli., The aim of this thesis is to analyse the market power of the most significant insurance companies and its relation to relevant financial indicators. The first part of the thesis is focused on defining basic concepts of insurance industry. The second part deals with the definition of approaches to measuring market power. Subsequently, a literary research of scientific articles and studies dealing with the topic is performed. In the last part of the thesis is analysis of the market power of the insurance sector as a whole, and also an analysis of the most significant insurance companies. Furthermore, the relations between concentration and selected financial indicators are tested., Fakulta ekonomicko-správní, Studentka přednesla téma své DP ''Tržní síla v pojišťovnictví'', otázky vedoucího DP: 1. Jak si vysvětlujete, že vaše závěry ohledně vztahu koncentrace a ziskovosti jsou většinou opačné než v případě studií uvedených v rešerši? 2. Jak se projevila koronavirová krize v hospodaření pojišťoven a jejich přístupu ke klientům? Studentka na otázky reagovala. Otázka oponentky DP: 1. Upřesněte pojem ''bilanční suma pojišťoven'' (str. 32) a upřesněte pojmy aktiva pojišťoven a pasiva pojišťoven. Vysvětlete rozdíl mezi názvem obrázku 1 (str. 33) a popisem osy y. 2. Proč, podle vašeho názoru, pro pojišťovny platí, že čím jsou vyšší ukazatele ROA (5) a ROE (6), tím je to lepší? 3. Upřesněte definici a interpretaci koeficientů korelace na str. 51. 4. Vysvětlete způsob výpočtu korelačních koeficientů v tabulkách 11, 13 a 15. Studentka na otázky reagovala., Dokončená práce s úspěšnou obhajobou

Verschiedene Bioökonomie-Strategien zielen auf die Substitution fossiler Brennstoffe durch nachwachsende Rohstoffe. Jedoch ist auch die Produktion agrarischer Ressourcen im derzeitigen Modell der industriellen Landwirtschaft ein extraktives System, das auf die ständige Zufuhr externer Nährstoffe angewiesen ist. Nach einer historisch-theoretischen Analyse dieser Nährstoffflüsse geht der Beitrag auf den Nährstoff Phosphor bzw. den Rohstoff Phosphatgestein ein. Es zeigt sich, dass Phosphatgestein, jahrzehntelang eine "billige Massenware", ab 2007 zu einem strategischen Rohstoff wurde, wobei auch Analysen über ein mögliches Fördermaximum (Peak Phosphorus) um das Jahr 2030 entstanden sind. Anhand exemplarischer Strategien staatlicher und privater Akteure zum Umgang mit der neuen Situation wird deutlich, dass die Kontrolle über Phosphor-Flüsse zunehmend umkämpft ist. Der Beitrag argumentiert, dass Bioökonomie-Strategien bereits bestehende Auseinandersetzungen um die Phosphatversorgung verschärfen und globale Ungleichheiten verstärken, die unter anderem in Ernährungskrisen hervortreten. Technologische Erneuerungen, die auch im Rahmen der Bioökonomie vorangetrieben werden, erlauben nur eine bedingte Abkehr vom extraktiven Charakter der Landwirtschaft, können aber die Interessen dominanter Akteure sichern., Various bioeconomy strategies aim to replace fossil resources with renewable agrarian resources without departing from the agro-industrial model. Paradoxically, the bioeconomy model is an extractive system itself, dependent on the constant supply of mineral resources to replace the nutrients extracted from the soil. Using a historical-theoretical approach, this article first analyses the flows of nutrients in this system and then focuses specifically on the nutrient phosphorus and the raw material phosphate rock. Classified as a "low-cost bulk commodity" for decades, since 2007 phosphate rock has become a strategic resource and scholars have started debating the possibility of reaching "Peak Phosphorus" by 2030. By analysing state and private actor strategies to adapt to this emerging situation, it becomes clear that the control over flows of phosphorous is increasingly contested. This article argues that bioeconomy strategies are aggravating existing conflicts over phosphate supply, as well as global inequalities, which inter alia become evident in food crises. Technological innovations, which are promoted within bioeconomy strategies, only reduce the extractive character of industrial agriculture in a limited way, while also securing the interests of dominant actors.

Market power in electricity and emission-permit markets in the South-East Europe Regional Electricity Market, which comprises both EU members subject to the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) and non-EU members exempt from it, affects social welfare and carbon leakage. We examine its impact under three market settings: perfect competition (PC) and two leader-follower versions, in which a leader can exert market power in either the electricity market (S-T) or both the electricity and permit markets (S). Under PC, carbon leakage is equal to 11%-39% of ETS emission reduction depending on the cap stringency. Generally, in S-T, the leader's capacity withholding results in ETS emissions below and non-ETS emissions above PC levels. However, carbon leakage is lower vis-à-vis PC as the ETS emission reduction offsets the non-ETS emission increase. Finally, in S, the leader's propensity to lower the permit price increases ETS emissions and exacerbates carbon leakage compared to S-T.

Abstract Background Many of the harms created by the global soft drink industry that directly influence human and planetary health are well documented. However, some of the ways in which the industry indirectly affects population health, via various socio-economic pathways, have received less attention. This paper aimed to analyse the extent to which market power and corporate wealth and income distribution in the global soft drink market negatively impact public health and health equity. In doing so, the paper sought to contribute to the development of a broad-based public health approach to market analysis. A range of dimensions (e.g., market concentration; financial performance; corporate wealth and income distribution) and indicators (e.g., Herfindahl Hirschman Index; earnings relative to the industry average; effective tax rates; and shareholder value ratios) were descriptively analysed. Empirical focus was placed on the two dominant global soft drink manufacturers. Results Coca-Cola Co, and, to a lesser extent, PepsiCo, operate across an extensive patchwork of highly concentrated markets. Both corporations control vast amounts of wealth and resources, and are able to allocate relatively large amounts of money to potentially harmful practices, such as extensive marketing of unhealthy products. Over recent decades, the proportion of wealth and income transferred by these firms to their shareholders has increased substantially; whereas the proportion of wealth and income redistributed by these two firms to the public via income taxes has considerably decreased. Meanwhile, the distribution of soft drink consumption is becoming increasingly skewed towards population groups in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Conclusions Market power and corporate wealth and income

Food quality schemes (FQS: organic and geographical indication products) are often supposed to be more sustainable by their political advocates. We explore the social sustainability advantage of FQS through the lens of supply chains’ bargaining power (BP) distribution. We propose an indicator synthesizing different sources underlying BP (competition-based, transactional, institutional) and counting two dimensions (fair BP distribution and adaptation capacity), that we apply to 18 FQS supply chains and corresponding reference. FQS perform better than their reference products on both dimensions. This better performance is due to a combination of sources., Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::12 - Producció i Consum Responsables, Postprint (published version)