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This study examines how antitrust law adoptions affect horizontal merger and acquisition outcomes. Using the staggered introduction of competition laws in 20 countries, we find antitrust regulation decreases acquirers' 5-day cumulative abnormal returns surrounding horizontal merger announcements. A decrease in deal value, target book assets, and industry peers' announcement returns are consistent with the market power hypothesis. Exploiting antitrust law adoptions addresses a downward bias to an estimated effect of antitrust enforcement. The potential bias from heterogeneous treatment effects does not nullify our results. Overall, antitrust policies seem to deter post-merger monopolistic gains, potentially improving customer welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The market power of monopolies can severely restrict citizens' freedom of choice. In the case of utilities, often portrayed as natural monopolies, such power may result in high prices and unreliable or absent services, especially in marginalized communities such as low-income neighborhoods or remote rural villages. While government regulation has been the traditional remedy to curb natural monopolies' power, in this paper, we address a different solution: monopoly bypassing through collective action. We present two types of monopoly bypassing—partial and complete—through the lens of civic wealth creation (CWC): the generation of social, economic, and communal endowments that benefit communities. Through our analysis of three water and sanitation utility services cases, we demonstrate how CWC is used to catalyze the collective action of engaged citizens to effectively bypass monopoly power. The cases highlight the three stakeholder categories involved in CWC initiatives—communities, enterprises, and regimes of support—and illustrate how they act collectively to provide credible market-based solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to understand the role of alternative pricing and financing mechanisms on the budget impact for payers and the risks and returns of manufacturers for gene therapies. This article uses fundamental economic principles to interpret the implications of alternative pricing mechanisms in terms of the share of value appropriated by the manufacturer and how alternative financing mechanisms alter it. It demonstrates these concepts by studying the financial impacts for a payer and the manufacturer across alternative pricing and financing mechanisms that could be used by the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to pay for gene therapy for sickle cell disease. Unlike value-based and manufacturer-set monopoly prices, an effective monopoly price can be derived to guarantee monopoly profits for manufacturers during their exclusivity period, thereby providing a high appropriation share and substantially lowering price and budget impact for a payer. For sickle cell disease gene therapy, the 10-year budget impact for the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would range from US dollar $8.6 billion to $12.8 billion under a value-based price, to $10.2 billion to $15.2 billion under a monopoly price, but reduce to $7.7 billion under an effective monopoly price. The latter price would still fetch over 50% of the total surplus to the manufacturer while mitigating their risk of sales volume. Significant budget impacts for funding gene therapy are not mitigated across alternative financing mechanisms at any given price. The price determines most of the budget impact. The option of a patent buyout may help negotiate down prices to effective monopoly prices. • Over the next decade, many expensive curative therapies will likely enter the US market. Besides assessing their economic value and deriving value-based prices, the growing size of the eligible target population raises challenges to how payers can afford these therapies and yet provide enough returns to signal continued research and development investments. • Adopting a value-based price or retaining the monopoly price to pay for innovation through insurance has different welfare implications for the payer and manufacturer. Instead, an alternative, the effective monopoly price, was presented, which can guarantee monopoly profits for innovators during their exclusivity period and, yet, substantially lower price and budget impact. It can be welfare-enhancing both from a static and dynamic efficiency point of view. • Determining the appropriate price is more important for a public payer in mitigating affordability concerns than figuring out the mechanism for financing the budget impact of innovation over time. The option of a patent buyout may help negotiate down prices to effective monopoly prices. These concepts were illustrated with a substantive example of pricing gene therapy for sickle cell disease in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study how to regulate a monopolistic firm using a robust-design, non-Bayesian approach. We derive a policy that minimizes the regulator's worst-case regret, where regret is the difference between the regulator's complete-information payoff and his realized payoff. When the regulator's payoff is consumers' surplus, he caps the firm's average revenue. When his payoff is the total surplus of both consumers and the firm, he offers a piece rate subsidy to the firm while capping the total subsidy. For intermediate cases, the regulator combines these three policy instruments to balance three goals: protecting consumers' surplus, mitigating underproduction, and limiting potential overproduction. (JEL D21, D42, D83, H25, L51) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article derives the optimal wholesale tariff that is proposed by the monopolistic manufacturer of a branded product to a monopolistic retailer if the retailer also sells a private label whose quality is unobserved by the brand manufacturer. The focus is on market-share contracts where the manufacturer controls the quantities of both products. To learn the quality of the private label and diminish the retailer's information rent, it distorts the quantity of the branded product downwards and that of the private label upwards. The manufacturer can control the quantity of the private label if it combines an excess payment with an end-of-year repayment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies how online grocers use service time to respond to local competition and demand conditions when prices are uniformly set at the national level. Using comprehensive data collected twice a week over three years from 172 Israeli local markets, we show that an online grocer sets identical prices in all markets. By contrast, service time is shorter in more competitive markets and on low-demand days. Next, we exploit regional and temporal variation in entry decisions to examine how the incumbent adjusts its service time when new online grocers enter the market. The incumbent's service time falls significantly on low-demand days and in monopolistic markets. This decrease begins shortly before entry and is greater when the entrant poses a larger competitive threat. On high-demand days and in competitive markets we do not find a significant change in service time in the months surrounding entry. Our findings suggest that firms use service time to exercise their local market power when prices are unresponsive and that operational considerations affect the extent to which they respond. This paper was accepted by Joshua Gans, business strategy. Funding: Financial support by Eli Hurvitz Institute of Strategic Management, The Henry Crown Institute of Business Research in Israel, The Maurice Falk Institute for Economic Research in Israel Ltd., Coller Foundation, and the Israeli Science Foundation [Grant 568/17] is gratefully acknowledged. Supplemental Material: The online appendices and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.01820. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The optimal pricing of goods, especially when they are new and the innovating firm is a monopolist, must proceed without precise knowledge of the demand curve. This paper provides a pricing method with a relative robustness guarantee by maximizing a performance index which amounts to a worst‐case ratio of the obtained payoff to the best possible payoff. Assuming monotonicity and complementarity of demand in price and the unknown demand parameter, the performance index is fully determined by its behavior at the boundary of the parameter space. This allows for an efficient computation of an optimal robust price. In the linear case, which can also be used for nonlinear demand with bounded slope, the method provides a simple closed‐form solution. A comparison with the standard worst‐case payoff criterion reveals substantial improvements in both absolute and relative performance, at only a small cost relative to the maximized expected profit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I argue that the Brandeisian antitrust movement—which seeks to use antitrust to promote market competition—aligns with the political philosophy of republicanism and promotes two key republican ends: nondomination and self-government. The approach reduces domination by limiting the ability of corporations to act arbitrarily and makes self-government more feasible by making the economic landscape more hospitable to the production of citizens capable of republican self-government. By aligning themselves with this broader philosophical tradition, Brandeisians can counter the criticism made against them that they are part of a frivolous movement that fetishizes smallness for its own sake. I also argue that the Brandeisian and republican approach to antitrust is better suited to identifying the harms of internet monopolies, which are more likely to arise naturally through network effects than past monopolies, thus giving both republicanism and the Brandeisian approach a renewed purpose in the current economic landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Platforms can create value within their ecosystems through their investments. In this paper, we model a monopolistic platform choosing the level of a demand-enhancing investment and the membership fees that sellers and buyers pay to access the platform. We find that platform size and quality are large when the degree of product differentiation among sellers and investment productivity are high. Platform profit and users' surplus are aligned. If the platform sells a product under its brand, incentives to invest are higher, compared to a pure marketplace, and sellers' surplus can be larger if the degree of product differentiation is low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sports leagues are traditionally considered natural monopolies. Understanding how they interact with one another is important. It is unclear how participation in a closed supra league affects competition in domestic leagues. This paper studies the effect of participating in basketball's Euroleague on team performance in national leagues. We find that Euroleague participation reduces the probability of victory by around 9% in 'big' leagues (i.e. those with the strongest teams). However, no significant effect was found in other leagues. A possible transmission channel is the reduction in the number of days between matches. We discuss the policy implications of this result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate the impact of monopoly power on the world of work within the logistics segment, particularly in the context of automation processes. We conduct a fieldwork analysis of three workplaces situated in Italy, each owned by distinct types of monopolies: a corporate monopoly, Philip Morris, the global leader in tobacco and cigarette production; a state-owned monopoly, Poste Italiane, the exclusive public provider of mail services within the national borders; and a novel form of digital monopoly that holds control over intangibles and exhibits monopsonistic control over labour — Amazon. Through a comparative examination of these three diverse forms of monopolies, utilising corporate-level metrics and patent data, we scrutinise the restructuring of labour processes following the introduction of Automated Guided Vehicles. Employing a qualitative analysis that includes semi-structured interviews with HR professionals, IT specialists, and workers, we underscore that powerful monopolies play a crucial role in shaping the trajectory of technological development, adoption, and utilisation. Despite notable distinctions observed among the three cases, we document a common trend of standardisation and codification of human activities when interfacing with automated machines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a challenging task to achieve the minimum average CCT (coflow completion time) and provide isolation guarantees in multi-tenant datacenters without prior knowledge of coflow sizes. State-of-the-art solutions either focus on minimizing the average CCT or providing optimal isolation guarantees. However, achieving the minimum average CCT and isolation guarantees in multi-tenant datacenters is difficult due to the conflicting nature of these objectives. Therefore, we propose FIGCS-TF (Fast and Isolation Guarantees Coflow Scheduling via Traffic Forecasting), a coflow scheduling algorithm that does not require prior knowledge. FIGCS-TF utilizes a lightweight forecasting module to predict the relative scheduling priority of coflows. Moreover, it employs the MDRF (monopolistic dominant resource fairness) strategy for bandwidth allocation, which is based on super-coflows and helps achieve long-term isolation. Through trace-driven simulations, FIGCS-TF demonstrate communication stages that are 1.12 × , 1.99 × , and 5.50 × faster than DRF (Dominant Resource Fairness), NCDRF (Non-Clairvoyant Dominant Resource Fairness) and Per-Flow Fairness, respectively. In comparison with the theoretically minimum CCT, FIGCS-TF experiences only a 46% increase in average CCT at the top 95th percentile of the dataset. Overall, FIGCS-TF exhibits superior performance in reducing average CCT compared to other algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aviation industry in Indonesia plays an important role in supporting community mobility and the national economy. However, noncompliance with regulations, especially in reporting changes in ticket fare policies, has the potential to create monopolistic practices and unfair business competition. One of the cases that emerged was Lion Group's non-compliance which had an impact on the structure of the domestic aviation market. This study aims to analyze the implications of Lion Group's non-compliance with fare regulations on business competition in the aviation industry. The approach used is juridical-normative with data collection techniques through literature studies. The data analyzed includes laws and regulations, legal decisions, and related literature. The results of the study show that Lion Group's non-compliance creates barriers for competitors, reduces consumer choice, and increases the risk of unhealthy market dominance. This violates the principles of Law Number 5 of 1999 concerning the Prohibition of Monopolistic Practices and Unhealthy Business Competition. The implications of this study show the urgency of strengthening regulation and supervision by the Business Competition Supervisory Commission (KPPU) to prevent similar violations. Transparency in tariff policies and commitment to regulation are needed to create healthy and fair competition in the aviation industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remembering the devastating defeat of the Russian Empire in the Russo–Japanese War (1904–1905), in particular, at the Battle of Tsushima (May 1905), does not easily fit into patriotic and 'great power' narratives of the past promoted in Putin's Russia. In contrast to monolithic, state-dominated accounts of the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945), which have come to prevail over the last two decades, alternative accounts of memory emerge through remembering the Russo–Japanese War. This article highlights how the polyphonic memory of this conflict poses a challenge to monopolistic state-authored accounts, with their rigid, nationalist framings of memory, borders and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Comment analyzes the entrance of institutional investors into the singlefamily rental market after the Great Recession of 2008. The collapse of the housing market during the Great Recession fundamentally changed the ownership structure of U.S. single-family homes in two distinct ways. First, the number of families renting single-family homes soared. And second, institutional investors entered the single-family home market, buying many homes and converting them into rental properties. This postrecession reality has introduced a housing puzzle: the pricing trends of single-family rentals in the decade after the Great Recession suggest that institutional investors have captured monopolistic power over the single-family rental market despite owning a relatively small market share. Thus, this Comment evaluates the housing puzzle through the lens of antitrust law. While a potential antitrust case appears to suffer from the critical weaknesses of low entry barriers and market shares, analyzing institutional entrance into the single-family rental market under antitrust merger doctrine reveals that the case is stronger than it may initially seem. Although it is hard to envision a successful antitrust lawsuit against institutional investors today, there are reasons to believe these weaknesses will disappear if these market trends continue tomorrow. Furthermore, scrutinizing the entrance under alternative merger theories, such as the unilateral or coordinated effects theories, illustrates that a Clayton Act case would be more impactful than originally thought. After evaluating the antitrust case, this Comment considers how the housing market can instruct antitrust doctrine's further evolution, since commentators across academia, the media, and politics all criticize institutional entrance. By highlighting how unique market facts in housing obfuscate market power, this Comment suggests expanding the merger analysis to include not just levels and changes in concentration, but also orders of magnitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the market structure of the Hungarian bank market and the effects of the financial crisis of 2008 on it. With a static and a dynamic panel model we estimate the elasticity of total revenues with respect to changes in input prices so that we can determine the market structure based on the Panzar and Rosse methodology for the period between 2003 and 2020. We test the input price elasticity according to the balance sheet and profit and loss data of the top 13 companies. The results show that the Hungarian bank market was a monopolistic competition or a monopoly market in long run equilibrium. To see the effects of the financial crisis we use three subsamples, furthermore we estimate and test the H-statistic with a fixed effect model. During the examined period the level of factor price elasticity increased in time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to analyze theoretically whether changes in an access charge pricing policy can promote green electricity use. The model considers two hypothetical firms: One firm offers green electricity product, and the other firm provides conventional electricity. Each firm pays an access charge to the natural monopoly in order to have access to the transportation network. Through using a vertical differentiation model, we try to analyze the link between the access charges paid by the two firms and the qualities offered. We also attempt to explain why the consumers do not often choose green electricity. Finally, we suggest a new policy that can lead the consumers to choose the green electricity product instead of conventional electricity. Our model shows that changes in the access charge pricing policies can constitute a relevant component in the reforms of the electricity sector and can have impacts on the consumption of the green electricity. A differentiating access charge policy could allow a better penetration of the green electricity product and an increase in the social welfare when consumers have greater preferences in environmental qualities. Otherwise, their preservation at a uniform level is desirable in order to maintain the competition. JEL Classifications : B21, C72, L13, Q21, P28 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Militias hamper state‐building by undermining the government's monopoly of violence, which creates an environment of anarchy. Yet many governments collaborate with them. These pro‐government militias (PGMs), such as paramilitary groups, are not only a poor‐country phenomenon, that is, economic growth does not seem to eradicate these armed nonstate actors: Intriguingly, cross‐country data reveals a U‐shaped relationship between GDP per capita and PGM presence. This article presents an economic theory of PGM supply that can explain this puzzling relationship and provide actionable ways for international actors (e.g., UN) to discourage the emergence of PGMs. However, the theory also cautions that some common international policies (e.g., development aid) may unintentionally encourage PGM supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the economic impact of the abuse of superior trading position (ASTP) provision within Korea's draft Act on Fair Intermediary Trade of Online Platforms (AFITOP). The AFITOP, proposed as part of competition law reform in the digital era, applies to large online platform operators providing intermediary services. While derived from the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act (MRFTA), the ASTP provision's goal to protect the economically weak is secondary to the MRFTA's primary goal of efficiency. Furthermore, the provision's interpretative uncertainties burden enterprises, especially large ones and those exploring new business models. Including this provision in the AFITOP is likely to reduce innovation incentives among large online platform operators, and to foster enforcement bias toward the ASTP provision by the Korea Fair Trade Commission, thereby increasing inefficiency in competition law enforcement. Therefore, the ASTP provision in the AFITOP should not be introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political, economic transition of post-socialist states in Central Eastern Europe and the Balkans took different directions in the 90s. More recently, countries like Hungary, have experienced democratic backsliding, while Western-Balkans states, such as Montenegro, have been stuck in a never-ending transition. Sport is often utilized as a tool by hybrid regimes that systematically degrade democratic principles, dismantle independent institutions and merge political monopoly with economic power. The present comparative study aims to introduce the sport diplomacy approaches of Hungary and Montenegro, focusing on the state-led utilization of sport in foreign affairs. We argue that hybrid regimes governed by strong political elites tend to influence or overtake control of the autonomous sport movements in order to shape their external image in a more conducive way and to support nationalistic political agendas through the popularity of sports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, the geopolitical domination of the United States remained almost unquestioned. However, other countries have emerged as poles of influence in recent years, including China and Brazil. Despite this, cultural and media interaction between the two countries is still limited and often mediated by the United States. This paper explores the algorithmic representation of China by the video streaming platform Netflix and argues that the company acts imperialistically by seeking to establish monopolistic control of the global Internet television market and promoting biases that we call 'algorithmic orientalism'. By presenting China to the Brazilian public through this lens, Netflix plays the role of cultural gatekeeper that continues to promote hegemonically American worldviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designing a product line that considers value‐added services (VASs) is a strategic move for enterprises with diversified customer needs. Additionally, a dynamic pricing strategy that can respond to changes in the external environment is crucial for enterprises. This study investigates product and VAS price adjustments for enterprises in monopolistic and oligopolistic competitive environments, respectively, based on the multinomial logit model. A two‐stage pricing model is developed for products and services to obtain the optimal pricing strategy. The findings reveal that customers' strategic behaviors significantly impact on enterprises' pricing decisions. When adjusting prices, enterprises need to consider the strategic behaviors of customers to ensure the rationality of pricing. Furthermore, irrespective of the competitive environment faced by enterprises, there is a need to emphasize the importance of dynamic pricing. Making appropriate adjustments to prices in the second stage can, overall, enhance the profitability of the enterprise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the process of reforming from planned economy to market economy, the phenomenon of administrative monopoly has had a far-reaching impact on the development of China's economy. Based on the perspective of factor mismatch, this paper examines the impact of administrative monopoly on enterprise innovation and its realization path, utilizing panel data from 30 Chinese provincial regions spanning 8 years from 2008 to 2015. The results of the study show that administrative monopoly significantly hinders the innovation activities of enterprises, showing a negative impact on both the output and input sides of innovation. By triggering factor mismatch, administrative monopoly has a hindering effect on enterprise innovation activities. Specifically, the intervention of administrative monopoly in the market leads to the mismatch of capital and labor factors in the market. When the interaction terms of administrative monopoly with capital mismatch and labor mismatch are added to the empirical model of administrative monopoly, it is found that the hindering effect of these interaction terms on enterprises is greatly enhanced. In the case of a single factor of capital mismatch and labor mismatch or the co-existence of both factors, their hindering effect on firms' innovation is significantly enhanced. In addition, it is also found that capital mismatch has a more serious hindering effect on firm innovation than labor mismatch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the economy, monopolists of all kinds are engaged in "conditional dealing." This is the practice of unilaterally offering benefits and penalties, or bribes and threats, to induce trading partners to refrain from competing against the monopolist or from dealing with its rivals. Pharma giants offer discounts conditioned on "loyalty," agricultural monopolists impose "exit penalties" for switching to rivals, and social networks offer interoperability for apps only so long as they don't compete. Economic scholarship shows that conditional dealing can inflict serious harms, but the law has not caught up. In particular, harmful conditioning goes undeterred because it falls into the gaps between the categories of our fragmented monopolization law. Courts have repeatedly tried to squeeze conditioning into ill-fitting categories, rejected claims on the basis of economically irrelevant criteria, and sometimes thrown up their hands altogether. The result: shambolic doctrine, tolerance of harmful behavior, and the collapse of enforcement efforts. Conditional dealing should be recognized as a new category of monopolizing conduct. To that end, this Article provides a new analytical framework: a definition of conditioning, as well as standards for gauging its exclusionary impact, contribution to power, and procompetitive justifications. It explains why a host of criteria often applied by courts--from price-cost and "coercion" tests to quantitative foreclosure screens--should be jettisoned. And it sketches two further ideas with broader implications for antitrust: a framework of "quick look monopolization" for nakedly harmful conditioning and a reinterpretation of the "attempted monopoly maintenance" offense to tackle knowing misconduct in complex markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why are some countries able to go ahead with comprehensive top-down local government amalgamation reforms, despite the many challenges such a reform entails? So far, we have limited theoretical and empirical understanding of how central governments manage to adopt such reforms. Drawing on different theoretical frameworks around public policy as well as research into territorial reforms, this article presents key political and institutional factors that are likely to facilitate top-down municipal mergers and examines whether these theoretical propositions help to explain the adoption of comprehensive top-down municipal amalgamation in four cases: Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, and Portugal. Key political and institutional factors identified in existing frameworks provide a useful starting point for understanding and explaining top-down comprehensive municipal amalgamation reforms, such as the role played by the breaking up of existing policy monopolies and emergence of new venues for discussing the reform. At the same time, the cases also reveal some important nuances that at times run counter to theoretical expectations. Our cases also reveal further factors, including the "bundling" of amalgamation reforms with other wider initiatives, and the potential effect of "distracting events" that should be taken into account in the further development of theoretical frameworks concerning top-down amalgamations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite Turkey's changing political regimes, sports have remained under state governance since 1938. This article analyzes the ideologies, influences, and politics that have shaped this state monopoly over the sports system across three phases from the 1920s to the 1990s: establishment, stabilization, and instrumentalization. The establishment phase aimed to align sports with nation-building ideals, incorporating nationalist ideology and paramilitarism. The stabilization phase embraced a statist approach influenced by socio-economic conditions and Soviet influence. The instrumentalization phase, beginning with the Özal years, utilized sports for political discourse and socio-economic purposes, retaining the state-run system even during the era of neoliberalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid the inflation crisis of the 1970s, the Austrian School economist F. A. Hayek presented a radical proposal to solve inflation: the denationalization of currency and the introduction of competing currencies into the monetary system. While Hayek's proposal proved too radical for mainstream economists, Hayek found support within the American libertarian movement. Libertarians realized that Hayek's radical proposal would limit state control over the monetary system and allow for the free exchange of gold. Even though libertarians were not immediately successful in bringing Hayek's plan to fruition, their continued activism paved the way for the creation of cryptocurrency in 2009. This article demonstrates how Hayek and his libertarian supporters opened a new chapter in the history of the "money question" in the United States by advocating for the elimination of the government monopoly over money and the abolition of monetary politics itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of corporate expansion in the alcohol retail industry on small-scale retailers. Our empirical approach exploits the timing of corporate entries across U.S. states that do not have a state monopoly to examine entry effects based on proximity to incumbent retailers. The analysis, drawing on a comprehensive dataset of U.S. alcohol retailers from 2000 to 2020, reveals that corporate entries within a 1-mile radius positively impact the employment and revenue of nearby small-scale retailers, with these effects intensifying over time and being more pronounced in metropolitan markets. Despite these localized impacts, the overall market structure and firm behavior remain largely unaffected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the formation of production and trading networks in economies with general interdependencies and complex property rights. We argue that the right to exclude, a core tenet of property, grants asset owners local monopoly power that is amplified by an economy's endogenous production network. Our analysis generalizes the exclusion core, a cooperative solution concept based on the right to exclude, to markets with production. We identify sufficient (and essentially necessary) conditions for the nonemptiness of the exclusion core. Multisourcing and a bias toward shorter supply chains emerge in exclusion‐core outcomes. As a methodological contribution, we generalize the top trading cycles algorithm to a production economy and we show that it identifies outcomes in an economy's exclusion core. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate about the role of patent protection as a barrier to access to medicines has taken the frontlines in recent years.1 Concurrently, calls for the possibility of terminating the TRIPS Agreement have gained momentum and are becoming an appealing prospect by many proponents in high- and middleincome countries. Such propositions are formulated in consideration of the constraints and the monopoly of rights and innovations that originator drug companies -mainly residing in high level income states-have illustrated so clearly during the Covid-19 Pandemic. The circumstances, therefore, that existed when negotiating TRIPS have shifted clearly from the circumstance and spirit of what TRIPS was initially set out to achieve. The ongoing reviews of TRIPS which include the Doha Declaration, amendments of Article 31 and more recently the Waiver on TRIPS provide strong evidence that the system is not functioning as originally envisaged. However, does this warrant the termination or rather the curtailment of TRIPS as a more realistic and practical solution? Curtailment, for the purpose of this paper, operates on two levels, at a national level whereby more patchwork legislation is needed to counteract the monopolistic impact of exclusive rights, and at an international level, where amendments to the TRIPS Agreement would trigger automatic mechanisms to limit the role of the patent system in certain circumstances under some specific conditions. This paper advances the debate on these two levels, by proposing the urgent need to address the current global discrepancies and challenges surrounding medicines' affordability and availability. It contends that by addressing the current issues within the Agreement, the TRIPS Agreement and patent regimes could be preserved in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis study investigates how nationalist sentiments enable the gambling industry to capitalize on national markets. With the help of qualitative content analytical tools, we analyzed 500 curated social media posts targeting Finnish and Swedish audiences. The study compared narrative templates, identifying speaker positions (inside/outside sociocultural context) and types of nationalist connotations (surface-level/in-depth). The results are displayed in a four-field matrix that reveals that Finland’s state gambling monopoly, Veikkaus, leverages ‘cultural nationalism’ to highlight its social role, portraying itself as a supporter of Finnish values, sports, and civil society. In contrast, international gambling companies and former domestic monopolies in Sweden’s license-based regulatory system use more mechanical, ‘sports-nationalist’ symbols, though the former monopoly companies occasionally refer to traditional Swedish cultural identity symbols. Compared to Veikkaus, the Swedish operators approach the national market as commercial outsiders, seeking public trust through sports associations. The study sheds light on how regulatory systems shape digital capitalist strategies for targeting national consumers on the social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the mechanisms governing the extraction, circulation, and distribution of rent in the biotech industry. Building on recent scholarship, it contributes to debates surrounding the importance of rent in technoscientific capitalism. We analyse genome editing as a global labour process. Part One examines the ongoing patent battle over CRISPR-Cas9 as a struggle for control over a foundational biotechnology increasingly central to several industrial sectors: a process of enclosure that facilitates a shift towards monopoly, rent extraction, and financial speculation. Part Two then details how patented CRISPR technologies are valorised through the construction of global, multi-layered infrastructures of rent extraction based on complex webs of financial and licensing deals. Part Three maps the uneven global geographies of CRISPR patenting. It considers how monopoly power emerges through the continuous conversion of public research into private assets, and how this enclosure reinforces profoundly unequal systems of distribution of royalties and rents in the global biopolitical economy. We interrogate how CRISPR technologies cement and expand neocolonial geographies of rent extraction, privatising the economic benefits and socialising the ecological risks. Finally, we argue that an increasingly monopolistic corporate biopower mediates how genome editing technologies are developed, and which mutant ecologies are socially produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a slew of recent scholarship has examined the phenomenon of executive overstay, there is little talk about the more complex and equally vexing phenomena of judicial overstay. This article begins to examine the many layers and complexities of judicial overstay by exploring whether the political branches ever seek to prolong abusively the time in office of loyal judges, and if so, by what mechanisms. Illustrating this is not merely a theoretical practice, we label such a phenomenon court‐hoarding, and consider it a subset of the broader category of judicial overstay. Our contribution is two‐fold. First, we argue that while court‐hoarding is a somewhat risky and less‐known governance tactic that is likely to occur only when certain conditions are fulfilled, the potential benefits of court‐hoarding for power consolidation and institutional monopoly power are profound. Second, we contribute to the emerging literature on judicial tenure. More specifically, we add conceptual utility to thinking about judicial tenure—and its abuse—by describing a three‐layer model of court‐hoarding, consisting of a core, a mid‐layer, and a periphery, which correspond to three broad categories of influencing judicial tenure across time and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydropolitical relations have long attracted the world of academia, and hydrohegemony and counter-hydrohegemony frameworks have recently become important in analysing power relations between riparian states. However, little attention has been given to the hydrohegemonic situation of the Nile River. This study tries to analyse this status, specifically in the Eastern Nile Basin. The data, elicited through unstructured interviews from purposively selected informants, has been analysed thematically. The findings reveal that Egypt aspires to be a hegemon in the basin but is not. Despite its use of different coercive and subtle mechanisms to induce ideational or hegemonic compliance, these have not been successful: Ethiopia has not consented to or accepted Egypt's claim over the Nile. Concomitantly, since the 1990s, Ethiopia's position has transcended from veiled to overt contest, which anticipates a new order, challenging the monopolistic position of Egypt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the trade environment of a globalized economy, tariffs play a crucial role in transnational supply chains. At the same time, the power structure of the supply chain also plays an important role in the decision making and income distribution of a transnational supply chain. Therefore, we construct game-theoretic models to analyze the impacts of tariffs and power structures on the decision making and revenue distribution of transnational supply chains. First, we consider a bilateral monopoly model consisting of a Chinese manufacturer and a U.S. retailer and analyze the effects of tariffs and power structures on decision making and revenue distributions in this supply chain. Then, we extend the model to a duopoly competition model consisting of two Chinese manufacturers and one American retailer, further analyzing the roles of tariffs and power structures. The results indicate that in the bilateral monopoly model, the impact of tariffs on the manufacturer's profits is always greater than on the retailer's profits under a manufacturer-led circumstance. However, in a competitive model, when the market size is large, the impact of tariffs on the manufacturer's profits exceeds that of the retailer's profits; conversely, when the market size is smaller, the impact of tariffs on the retailer's profits is greater than on the manufacturer's profits. Furthermore, we find that in the duopoly competition model, under the manufacturer-led circumstance, both the manufacturer and the retailer earn the highest profits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the introduction of rationalist concepts through Taylorization to Turkey during the early republican era, using Wallace Clark's case of the Turkish State Monopolies. Design/methodology/approach: The study uses a historical narrative approach to explore the roles of foreign experts in the transfer of rationalist and Taylorist ideas to Turkish State Monopolies (Inhisarlar Idaresi). Findings: This study illuminates the introduction and adoption of Taylorist principles in early republican Turkey through multiple lenses. First, it underscores the era's fervent drive for rapid modernization, rooted in emulation of Western models perceived as progressive. Second, using a historical narrative approach, this research highlights the pivotal role of foreign expertise in catalyzing and formalizing rationalization efforts. Originality/value: This study makes a unique and meaningful contribution to the history of management in terms of demonstrating the international influence of the Scientific Management Movement through the neglected case of Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the competitive dynamics and digitalization within Kyrgyzstan's banking sector. The study analyzes the interplay between bank competition, digitalization, profitability, and stability using the two-step Generalized Method of Moments. Banking competition is assessed from 2012 to 2022 via the Lerner Index and the Boone Indicator. Furthermore, a novel method is employed to estimate the bank digitalization index based on the System Dynamics Approach. Findings indicate a competitive landscape marked by monopolistic competition, where digitalization enhances operational efficiency and competitive advantage. However, increased market power inversely affects digital adoption, suggesting monopolistic banks innovate less than their competitive peers. Further, the study highlights that intensified competition and digital adoption may encourage riskier bank behaviors, aligning with competition-fragility theory. Digitalization improves profitability, advocating for banks to adopt innovations to surpass competitors and improve financial performance. Policymakers are advised to foster a balanced competitive environment that encourages innovation without compromising bank stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the effects of banking integration on banking competition in the ASEAN‐6 countries. Using a data set of 3217 bank‐year observations over the period 1996–2018, our main results indicate that: (i) banking openness positively affects banking competition; (ii) the overall degree of balanced (in/out) integration leads to greater market power; and (iii) the increase in the market monopoly following the participation of foreign banks can be reduced by good regulatory policies. These results remain intact when two alternative competition measures are employed and when a polynomial model and a threshold model are used to reveal the non‐linear and heterogeneous effects of banking integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work analyses the mutual dependence linking digital platforms, i.e., ‘Big Tech’, and the US military apparatus. Three main elements at the roots of such dependence are detected: an ‘originary linkage’ binding the development of digital platforms with governments’ military R&D efforts; the critical nature of infrastructures and technologies controlled by platforms; and their role as their government’s ‘eyes and ears’ (both at home and abroad). Focusing on the US, we first document the growing relevance of these corporations as US Department of Defense contractors. Second, we explore a selection of multi-year contracts entrusting platforms to develop and manage critical technologies and infrastructures for military purposes. Finally, we document the direct involvement of major US-based platforms in war scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wealth inequality remains as wide, and as troubling, as it was a half-century ago. While scholars have offered various explanations, there is a contributor that has escaped serious scrutiny: state monopoly power. It is not just that there is a long history of states and municipalities using their monopoly power to protect dominant interests, from enacting Black Codes to shuttering Chinese laundries to barring women, immigrants, and minorities from certain professions. It is also that states continue to use their monopoly power in ways that entrench inequality, from zoning restrictions to eminent domain to regulations that, in effect, bar Black women from braiding hair, Latino immigrants from operating food trucks, and more. To raise revenue, states even monopolize markets primarily patronized by vulnerable communities. And yet for the most part, antitrust law--concerned only with efficiency and consumer welfare--has ignored state monopolies. In fact, the Supreme Court has ruled that states are immune from antitrust review even though there is nothing in the Sherman Antitrust Act's text to support this position. This Article takes a different tack. It recovers the Sherman Antitrust Act's neglected connection to anti-state monopolism, and to the Reconstruction Amendments, to show that righting the wrongs of slavery and the Black Codes--both a type of monopoly, a type of price fixing--was a core motivation for the Sherman Antitrust Act. Far from believing states should be able to use their monopoly power with impunity, the Act's sponsor and namesake saw antitrust as a way to rein in discriminatory state monopolies. In short, this Article makes the case for bringing Reconstruction to bear on antitrust. Doing so would not only bring antitrust law closer to its original goal of economic opportunity for all. It would also help fulfill the lost promise of Reconstruction. We say this because, given how the courts have weakened the Fourteenth Amendment, enabling antitrust law to scrutinize a state's discriminatory monopolies would achieve an original purpose of the Reconstruction Amendments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• China's Anti-Monopoly Law (AML) has a positive impact on average labor wage. • Labor income share increases more in local state-owned and nonstate-owned enterprises. • AML effectively promotes industry competition and boosts the labor income share. • AML reduces market power, curbs monopoly profit, and increases the average labor wage. This study examines the impact of increased market competition on labor income share. We use the enactment of China's Anti-Monopoly Law as a quasi-natural experiment. The results reveal that the Anti-Monopoly Law has a significant positive effect on the labor income share of firms with higher market power. This is because the rising market competition, effected by the Anti-Monopoly Law, inhibits market power and increases average labor wages. Our findings are relevant for firms in provinces with higher administrative monopolies, with less competition, and under industries with less competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse the optimal discretion of a powerful local government (LG) in deciding the instrument choice and setting standards of simple menu contracts (composed of a fixed price and a cost reimbursement) of monopoly regulation. Between the two, a fixed-price contract entails more incentives for efficiency than a cost-reimbursement contract, but ensures more profits for the firm. Due to a preference bias towards the firm's benefits between governments, an incentive reward, offered by the federal government (FG) to the powerful LG with informational advantage of efficiency gain from the regulation, is considered to induce an efficient regulatory policy. We find that under the FG's delegation mechanism, upper-level government conflict leads to a compromised policy as an exchange payoff and additional informational rent to the LG for part of their information value. For the remaining information, the reward is rejected, and the LG has the discretionary power to set policy criteria for simple contracts. The results suggest that bureaucratic political issues still lead to an excessive tendency towards either a fixed price or cost reimbursement scheme, depending on the bias direction of the LG's preferences regarding the monopoly. However, the delegation mechanism of hierarchical bureaucracy can effectively alleviate the influence of policy distortions caused by political factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forty years have passed since an inflation-adjusted price cap, widely called RPI-X, was proposed as a way of controlling prices in the UK's newly privatised monopoly telecommunications company by a form of incentive regulation. The paper traces developments since then in several jurisdictions, within the context of a wider field of changing regulatory governance involving legislatures and governments as well as regulatory agencies. The focus is on, first, the experience of increasing complexity of the incentive schemes adopted, and second on the growing political salience of regulatory decisions which adds goals such as net zero, with more direct quantitative targets, to maximising consumer welfare. The implications of these changes for regulatory interventions are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After their advent, digital platforms were hailed as innovative institutional solutions capable of reducing transaction costs for a wide group of stakeholders by removing traditional intermediaries and facilitating the match of demand and supply through digital means. However, a group of big investor-owned platforms from Silicon Valley soon imposed themselves as monopolistic actors within digital markets, leveraging their strong bargaining position to abuse their authority and extract undue rents. Different legal strategies have been assessed in the last few years to limit this unilateral rule-setting power, particularly at the EU level. Nevertheless, little consideration has been given to alternative forms of platform organising, aimed at including the relevant stakeholders in the governance of platforms to redress power abuses. This article presents the case of platform cooperatives, which are platforms owned and governed by their workers and users. Moreover, the article considers the institutional complementarities that could help platform co-ops overcome challenges and compete with capitalist platforms on fair legal and political bases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Privacy and antitrust are on a collision course. Large firms with monopoly power or near-monopoly power can build products that ostensibly enhance user privacy while raising rivals' costs and allowing monopolist firms to gain footholds in secondary markets. In this Note, I use the example of Apple's privacy changes, the impact these changes had on digital advertising, and Apple's subsequent expansion of its own digital marketing offerings as a motivating example of how current antitrust doctrine is ill-equipped to handle this new form of monopolist behavior. Privacy is the latest example of an "incommensurability" problem in the final stage of the standard rule of reason analysis. Even if a plaintiff can demonstrate competitive harm from privacy-preserving conduct, courts are constrained in what type of relief they can order. Fortunately, one of the main federal antitrust enforcers--the Federal Trade Commission--is also the source of much of federal privacy law. It has the authority and expertise to promulgate rules pursuant to section 18 of the Federal Trade Commission Act to address anticompetitive privacy and strike the appropriate balance between competition and consumer protection. Much of the Commission's privacy enforcement has reflected the heavily criticized "notice-and-choice" privacy framework. However, the Commission's recent initiation of the Magnusson-Moss rulemaking process signals an opening to not only move beyond this framework, but also to consider both competition and privacy in the formation of any rule regulating technology firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]