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This contribution investigates whether the 2014 White Paper on EU Merger Control adds value to the existing debate surrounding non-controlling minority shareholdings. In this respect, it evaluates whether the 2013 minority shareholdings consultation rationale is consistently followed through. This contribution analyses three important novelties put forward by the White Paper: the principles guiding the reform (plugging the enforcement/regulatory gap, observing the reform's proportionality, and its consistency with existing control systems), defining the standards that the transactions prone to investigation must meet ("competitively significant links"), and narrowing down the choices for intervention methods ("targeted transparency system"). The contribution concludes that while the White Paper's proposed amendments generally fit the reform principles scheme, certain problems may still be identified, especially in relation to the necessity of a waiting period for minority shareholdings, and to the benefits and drawbacks of the possibility to intervene ex post on such transactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the authors describe the structure and assessment of a capstone course in economics. The outcomes are noteworthy for three reasons. First, among cited evidence to date, this is the only undergraduate economics program from a nonselective public university reporting similar achievements in undergraduate research paper publications. Second, the program reports learning outcomes of a relatively new instrument in standardized test (ETS MFT Economics) to measure attainment of proficiencies in economics. Finally, it introduces undergraduate research paper competition outcomes as a measure of student paper quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the European Commission's guidance paper (GP) and the relevance and effectiveness of reforming Article 82 through a soft-law tool, and whether the GP demonstrates an effective means of compliance for Germany. The EU aspires to launch GP's features that will analyze concepts such as consumer welfare, anti-competitive foreclosure, and consumer harm. It discusses how the GP could be professed from the viewpoint of German competition law and policy, and the kind of transitional regime required for an effective completion of its main analytical concepts. It notes that it is therefore important to come up an overall balance between both the efficiencies and competitive-harm policy when enforcing Article 82 despite all the criticism.

Platform power poses a number of challenges for competition authorities. One concern is that big tech companies may harm competition through the acquisition of emerging companies with a high competitive potential. Such acquisitions may escape ex ante merger control if they do not reach the turnover threshold for mandatory notification. The Commission sought to bridge this enforcement gap with its Article 22 guidance and the Digital Markets Act. This paper evaluates the steps taken by the Commission to increase scrutiny of such mergers. Building on this discussion, the paper examines the AG opinion in Towercast and analyses the residual gap-closing function of Article 102 TFEU. The aim of this paper is to bring the new developments surrounding digital merger control together and assess whether they represent an adequate response to the challenges posed by the digital economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the European Commission making global leadership claims in the field of audit regulation, the content of its 2010 Green Paper on ‘Audit Policy: Lessons from the Crisis’ warrants careful scrutiny. Important issues raised in the Green Paper include regulatory oversight, competition in the audit market, the dangers of having very few firms with the capacity to audit global transnational corporations, professional judgement, innovative audit practices and, last but not least, social responsibility. This article analyses the principal perspectives and assumptions underpinning the construction of the Green Paper. The aims are threefold: to enhance understanding of the contemporary regulatory mindset of the European Commission, contribute to policy debate and inspire future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How to compete successfully in an online environment raises numerous issues for both small and medium enterprises² (SMEs) and regulatory agencies. This paper considers these matters at two different levels: the macro-scale (how markets are structured and operate; access to electronic infrastructure; resale price maintenance activities, and market mergers), and the micro (how individual firms operate and interact with their customers, competitors and suppliers). Each of these issues is examined, with a special focus on regulatory activity in the Australian competition and consumer law arena to deal with such matters. Some observations are also made on certain unexpected by-products of the electronic commerce: the growing incidence of scams perpetrated against SMEs; the likely continuing rise of the informal sector; and potential changes to conventional franchising models. Finally, the way in which regulatory agencies respond to all these matters is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical engineering knowledge (EEK), a specific technical know-how about solving engineering problems, is frequently accumulated and reused in this era of mass innovation and knowledge-driven economy. Since EEK is abidingly evolving because of the intense business competitions, continual technical renovations and wide industrial concern, it’s a new challenge both in theories and applications of knowledge management to analyse EEK evolution and its motivations. This paper proposes a novel approach to tackle this non-trivial issue. Based on the constructed domain hierarchy and EEK networks, EEK clusters are grouped and represented with populations, latent topics and distributions. Then four kinds of evolutional patterns are defined and recognised from the EEK clusters in neighbouring time intervals. The evolutional motivations of these patterns are discovered from the important evolutional events, with the proposed abductive reasoning algorithm. This paper also integrates all techniques, and implements a knowledge management system EEK-KEAS in computer-aided design (CAD), a typical engineering field. Experimental result shows that EEK-KEAS operations well in revealing the evolutional motivations of CAD EEKs, and outperforms the former approaches in feasibility and effectiveness, thereby opening up a novel way for further understanding the evolution of EEK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recently adopted Digital Markets Act (henceforth: DMA) addresses the behaviour of so-called gatekeepers by imposing a list of prohibitions and obligations on these platforms. Despite the potential of the initiative, it remains questionable how the DMA fits in the regulatory landscape. The DMA is – at least formally – not a competition law instrument but also differs from sector-specific regulation. This begs the question of how the DMA fits in the broader regulatory context. This paper aims to address this issue by assessing to what extent the DMA is different from "traditional" competition law and sector-specific regulation respectively. The unclarities regarding the position of the DMA in the broader regulatory context result in various difficulties, amongst others relating to the institutional set-up. The second part of this paper addresses these institutional difficulties resulting from the concurrent application of the DMA and "traditional" EU competition law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically examines the representation of female venture capitalists (VCs) on boards and how they exert substantial influence on firm innovation performance in China. We first identify a positive association between female VCs' board participation and firm innovation, implying that Chinese female VCs contribute to growing resource commitments and greater success in innovation through quality board services in portfolio firms. We then show that firms with female VC board directors exhibit a lower adverse effect of managerial myopia, capital market pressure, and product market competition on innovation activities. These results are robust to the use of instrumental variable (IV) estimations, subsamples, and alternative variable definitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ramsey's 1928 paper on saving and Hotelling's 1931 article on exhaustible resources are considered to be two seminal contributions in economic dynamics. They have been associated because of their temporal proximity, use of the calculus of variations, and because of Hotelling's citation of Ramsey. This connection however needs to be precisely investigated and characterized. On the basis of archival material, this paper shows that, on the interpersonal and theoretical ground, the connection is quite thin, but that significant parallels are found in Ramsey's and Hotelling's expectations with mathematical economics for the progress of science and for informing public decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The successful maintenance of Hong Kong as a great "trading state" in the wake of its colonial era has been well recounted in the literature. However, the city's continuing relevance as a key business hub depends on the extent to which the SAR authorities can respond to the challenges, and seize the opportunities, created by a trade governance terrain that has been evolving quickly over the last decade. This paper analyses how Hong Kong has performed as an actor in global trade governance, discusses the development of regional trade architecture, and offers a prospective assessment of how Hong Kong might calibrate its trade policies and strategies in response to the many political and economic shifts in the global trade system. The paper argues that Hong Kong should adopt a more pro-active outlook that goes beyond its long-standing defensive posture in order to carve out policy spaces over the next few years that might best ensure its economic interests and competitiveness within an uncertain landscape of trade architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's higher education expansion increases firms' human capital input in terms of the number of educated employees, while its quality undergoes questioning. It is unknown what employees with higher education bring to the firm in China. Considering that investment decision is one of the most important drivers of firm value, we examine how employees with higher education affect firms' investment efficiency in this paper. We document that the number of employees with higher education increases by 89% from 2008 to 2021. We further find that more employees with higher education are associated with higher investment efficiency through mitigating over- and underinvestment. This association is stronger for firms with high product market competition, low customer concentration, state-owned enterprises, and high senior manager education. Collectively, the results suggest that the information inputs channel, monitoring channel and up-and-down communications channel are likely underlying mechanisms through which higher educated employees affect firms' investment decisions. Overall, our paper sheds light on the real effect of higher educated employees on firms' investment efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the spillover effect of proactive preventive regulation represented by R&D expense inquiry letters (hereafter, RDILs) and its impact mechanism. Using deterrence theory and Chinese A-share listed firms from 2015–2020, we find that the industry receiving RDILs has a regulation effect on the R&D investment intensity catering motive of the non-receiving firms in the industry. That is, there is an industry spillover effect of RDILs regulation. The results of the regulatory mechanism analysis show that the industry spillover effect of RDILs regulation is more pronounced for non-receiving firms with more severe R&D manipulation intensity or weaker product market competitive positions. Further analysis shows that the inclusion of peer comparison questions in the RDILs increases the industry spillover effect of the inquiry letter regulation. We also find that the industry spillover effects of RDILs regulation result in higher future innovation quality for non-receiving firms. Overall, our study enriches our understanding of the effectiveness of inquiry letter regulation and provides some guidance for regulators' regulatory practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the 2009 Nystrom Competition sponsored by the fund established by Association of American Geographers (AAG) executive director J. Warren Nystrom. It states that the competition involves participants who have received their doctorates within the previous three years as AAG members. Furthermore, it says that the papers submitted by applicants are judged by the Nystrom Award Review Committee of the AAG.

Presents an award for the most outstanding student paper at the annual conference of the Plains Anthropological Society in Edmonton, Alberta. Solicitation of entries for the competition; Criteria for the student paper competition; Contact information.

The article presents information on the 2013 Nystrom Competition organized by the journal.

This paper examines the role and meaning of the concept of "fairness" in the application of European competition law, and in particular of Art, 102 of TFEU, It argues that, with its emphasis on firms competing on the bases of their superior performance, the paradigm of competition on the merits may well be considered a reference for the definition of whether a conduct by a dominant undertaking may be considered "fair". The paper finds support for this in the case law of the European Courts and the Commission, as well as in the legal constructions characterizing EU jurisprudence, such as the "special responsibility" of a dominant firm and the "essential facility" doctrine. This view of fairness is also at the bases of the application of art. 102 through the different issues posed by the development of data based digital economy; the paper also argues that such a view helps clarifying the criteria to be used when applying the principles set by the European Courts with respect to the application of art. 102 to excessive prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this work is to undertake a content analysis to gain an understanding of the research conducted involving marketing channels from an institutional-oriented perspective over the last three years. We examine the content of seven leading journals and identify 90 papers relevant to the study. The database of papers was classified into four mutually exclusive lines of research categories: theory, source, structure, and relationships. Of the papers in the study, 38 articles were classified as relationship-oriented, representing the largest (42.2%) segment of the sample. In terms of the overall database, broad topics that received considerable research attention include vertical competition, franchising, strategy, channel design, performance, relationalism, and push promotion. We generally conclude that research from an institution-oriented perspective remains of interest to channels researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is intended to explore a new method of measuring supply chain flexibility from two dimensions (resources and time) when the supply chain is coordinated. Under the assumptions that the node enterprises’ marginal costs increase with their outputs, firstly this paper analyses the coordination problem of a supply chain with buyback contract, then formulates the resource allocation with the entropy concept in the case of supply chain coordination, puts forward the concepts of resource output elasticity and time output elasticity, analyses the resources’ dynamic matching problem from the two dimensions of resource and time in order to respond to the change of market demand. Finally, based on the above discussion, this paper proposes a method of measuring supply chain flexibility by integrating the resource flexibility and time flexibility. The method not only considers the resources and time required to respond the market’s change, but also takes into account the coordination relationship between the node enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On 18 July 2022, the Council gave its final approval of the Digital Market Act's final text. Notwithstanding the amendments following the initial proposal published by the European Commission on 15 December 2020, the main objectives of the DMA have remained untouched and separate from the objectives pursued by competition rules. In the interim, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued its preliminary rulings on the bpost and Nordzucker cases, with particularly relevant consequences concerning the application of the double jeopardy principle. The potential remedies and obligations imposed on the main digital platforms both under Articles 5 to 7 of the DMA and under competition law rules will overlap and create a risk of incoherent enforcement, especially on the side of the European Commission. Against this background, the paper strives to draw out the narrow enforcement gap left for competition authorities. In addition, the paper highlights a number of alternatives open to competition authorities when enforcing competition law rules on digital markets, namely the segmentation of its enforcement efforts depending on the type of service concerned in each case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Latin American Business Review is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article calls for entries to the Essay Prize 2011 competition of the publication.

We consider a storage process under the generalised order-up-to-level policy, based on a continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC). Specifically, the process starts at level S; whenever it drops to s, an order is sent, which is carried out after an exponential lead time. If during the lead time level S is reached, the order is cancelled, incurring some fee. This paper is written as an extension of Barron [2016. "An Fluid Inventory Model with Exponential Lead Times and Order Cancellations." Stochastic Models 32 (2): 301-332]. While the latter paper considered a fluid inventory model with backlogging and focused on discounted analysis only, the case of lost sales was not solved. The present paper generalises the analysis to incorporate unsatisfied demand for the expected discounted costs and for the average costs per time unit. We consider four costs. There is a fixed nonzero ordering cost or a fee for each order cancellation, a purchase cost for each ordered item, a storage cost for the stock, and a penalty cost due to the unmet demand. Applying renewal theory, multi-dimensional martingales, and stopping time theory, we obtain explicit expressions of the cost components. Numerical study provides several guidelines on the optimal controls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global supplier selection has a critical effect on the competitiveness of the entire supply chain network. Research results indicate that the supplier selection process appears to be the most significant variable in deciding the success of the supply chain. It helps in achieving high quality products at lower cost with higher customer satisfaction. Apart from the common criteria such as cost and quality, this paper also discusses some of the important decision variables which can play a critical role in case of the international sourcing. The importance of the political-economic situation, geographical location, infrastructure, financial background, performance history, risk factors, etc., have also been pointed out in particularly in the case of global supplier selection. Supplier selection problem related to the global sourcing is more complex than the general domestic sourcing and as a result it needs more critical analysis, which could not be found properly in past available literatures. This paper discusses the fuzzy based Analytic Hierarchy Process (fuzzy-AHP) to efficiently tackle both quantitative and qualitative decision factors involved in selection of global supplier in current business scenario. The fuzzy-AHP is an efficient tool to tackle the fuzziness of the data involved in deciding the preferences of the different decision variables involved in the process of global supplier selection. The triangular fuzzy numbers are used to transform the linguistic comparison of the different decision criteria, sub-criteria and performance of the alternative suppliers. The pairwise comparison matrices help in deciding the synthetic extent value of each comparison and finally, the priority weights of one alternative over another are decided in this paper. An example from a manufacturing industry searching for the global supplier for a critical component is used to demonstrate the effective implementation procedure of proposed fuzzy-AHP technique. The proposed model can provide the guidelines and directions for the decision makers to effectively select their global suppliers in the current competitive business scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lot streaming combined lot splitting with operations overlapping is one of the effective techniques used to implement the time-based strategy in today's era of global competition. Therefore, this technique has been studied extensively over the past few decades. In this paper, we first propose a uniquely categorized structure to characterize the existing lot streaming problems in terms of three main dimensions, seven subdimensions. and 17 levels. Then, a notation set is defined to systematically express each existing lot streaming problem by seven ordered elements corresponding to the seven subdimensions. Based on the classification structure and the defined notation set, a comprehensive survey is presented to make up for the lack of a literature review on this subject. The objective is to help the reader gain a clear understanding of the evolution of previous research on lot streaming. This paper concludes with some constructive suggestions for future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As manufacturers face fierce competition in the global market, responsiveness has become an important competitiveness factor in addition to quality and cost. One essential responsiveness strategy is to reduce product development and lead times by integrating assembly planning with supplier assignment. This paper addresses the problem of integrated assembly and supply chain design under lead-time constraints by formulating and solving an optimisation problem with minimal total supply chain costs. This new time-constrained joint optimisation problem belongs to an NP-hard resource-constrained scheduling problem. To model this problem effectively, we develop a novel Hyper AND/OR graph and apply it for integrating assembly and supply chain decisions. We also develop a dynamic programming model and associated algorithm in order to solve the integrated optimisation problem with pseudo-polynomial time complexity in practice. Numerical case studies validate that the methods developed can solve the integrated decision-making problem optimally and efficiently. This paper overcomes the limitations of previous studies on concurrent assembly decomposition and supplier selection, which optimises cost without time constraints. The models and results of this research can be applied to a variety of areas including assembly design, maintenance module planning and supply chain restructuring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Return of products purchased by customers is a common phenomenon in the retail industry and results in costs to retailers. In practice, most retailers implement a full-refund policy, but the terms of customer returns policies vary. A customer returns policy serves as a post-customer service, and is a determinant factor in the customer’s decision to purchase the product, in addition to other factors, such as the price of the product. In this paper, for competing retailers who face customer returns, competition from multiple retailers and uncertain customer valuations of the product, we develop a model to examine when retailers can survive and what pricing strategy they should implement in a competitive market. We identify the co-existence conditions for multiple retailers and the existence conditions of a Nash equilibrium among competing retailers. We also show the impact of customer returns on the retailers’ pricing and market share, as well as on profits in a competitive market. Numerical examples are included to illustrate the major results discussed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper studies the incentive for a firm’s sustainable pricing and production policies with carbon dioxide emissions tax policy. We consider two competing firms who have different operation efficiencies and produce a same product to the end-users. Based on game theory models, we derive the competing firms’ optimal pricing and production policies, and show that the high-efficiency firm will set a lower retail price than that of the low-efficiency firm, either with same carbon emissions tax or without carbon emissions tax. When the two competing firms absorbed same carbon emissions tax, we show that both of them will set higher retail price than that without carbon emissions tax, and the high-efficiency firm’s both profit reduction and carbon emissions reduction percentages are lesser than that of low-efficiency firm. In addition, we find that when a firm incurs a higher carbon emissions tax, the firm gains a higher carbon emissions reduction percentage, but the competing firm gains a lower carbon emissions reduction percentage. We also find that in order to achieve a certain desired carbon emissions reduction percentage, the carbon emissions tax imposed on the high-efficiency firm should be more than that on the low-efficiency firm. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Supply chain agility (SCA) has emerged as an important capability to remain competitive in this era of business uncertainty and turbulence. This study aims to gain knowledge of the current state of research on SCA, specifically to have conceptual clarity and synthesise future research avenues. To achieve these goals, we have carried out a systematic review of 118 research papers on SCA published from 1999 to 2016. The findings suggest that the domain has witnessed steady growth since its inception, but little consensus has been observed around its definition and boundaries. To counter these definitional ambiguities, we have presented a comprehensive definition of SCA. The paper further discusses SCA along three thematic categories: the first considers SCA from the strategic perspective, the second considers SCA as a capability and focuses on its enablers and the third explores the impact of SCA on performance. Finally, towards the conclusion, a holistic framework summarising the findings is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the way in which the large football clubs are increasing their dominance, and whether this is compatible with EU competition law. Various insights from the economic and legal literature have been combined to give a new interpretation of EU competition law. The number of clubs with a realistic chance of winning important prizes has declined in many national markets. As a result, the economic competition has diminished and prices have increased to the detriment of welfare. This development has been reinforced by the joint actions of the top European clubs, such as threatening to start a Super League. Consequently, UEFA has implemented policies that have been particularly helpful for the top clubs. But, the clubs' actions are incompatible with EU competition law, as is the actual creation of a European Super League. If the EU were to enforce the law, the power of the big clubs would be reduced, and UEFA's policies could be based more on the old democratic principles, again. This would lead to more sporting successes for small clubs and to lower prices for the fans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Levelised Cost of Energy is frequently used for assessing the economic competitiveness across different technologies. Unfortunately, there are caveats and a significant problem is that opportunity costs are ignored. This paper therefore addresses how to calculate the Levelised Cost of Energy for Solar Photovoltaics more correctly than today starting from the premise that an energy source has to guarantee an output at a system level. Thus, energy storage systems are required. Furthermore, uncertainty must be handled, and Monte Carlo methods are used here. The lowest Levelised Cost of Energy occurs when the system is designed for continuous operation, as opposed to peak shaving, with 80% of its solution space found between 203 USD/MWh to 252 USD/MWh and an expected value of 226 USD/MWh. This is almost 3 times higher than a narrowly defined Levelised Cost of Energy, which ignores opportunity costs. Hence, it is clear that Solar Photovoltaics can guarantee output within economically feasible limits, albeit currently expensive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eco-industrial parks (EIPs) have been proposed as a transformative model for assisting developing countries in upgrading their industrial systems to meet higher global environmental standards while boosting economic competitiveness. However, for many industrial settings, the requisite contextual requirements have yet to be clarified. This paper aims to contribute to filling this gap. It examines the potential of transforming a case study Tanzanian industrial park, an Export Processing Zone (EPZ), into an EIP. The park was assessed against four criteria (roundput, locality, diversity and gradual change) using SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis. The paper draws upon key informant interviews, document reviews and physical site inspection. Findings reveal several strong and weak points of the EPZ, painting a scenario of a zone that is not based on the cycling of resources, does not have a diverse cooperation network arranged locally, and does not rely on the flow of renewables. However, the presence of a park management team, existing synergies, planned synergies and overall national and global development priorities make the park potentially strong as a whole. Our findings underscore the need for deliberate policy interventions. They can be applied to comparable contexts to pinpoint critical areas when planning the interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates international research collaboration (IRC) dynamics between the United States and the United Kingdom, examining co-publication and co-patent indicators. While IRC is crucial for enhancing research competitiveness and economic development, the choice of indicators remains a challenge. The paper addresses this gap by examining the association between co-publications and co-patents on the measurement of IRC. Findings indicate a robust positive correlation between co-publications and co-patents, reflecting increased collaboration in academic and industrial domains. Despite distinct growth rates, their aligned trends suggest potential redundancy in using both indicators. Notably, co-patents have a lasting positive effect on co-publications, emphasising the role of industrial innovations in forecasting scientific collaboration. Acknowledging study limitations, particularly its focus on core countries, prompts future research avenues to broaden insights into IRC dynamics. This study connects theoretical understanding with practical implications, offering nuanced perspectives for policymakers to formulate strategic plans for global scientific collaboration. Researchers are encouraged to consider these insights when selecting indicators, aligning choices with data availability and analytical ease to enhance the relevance and impact of their studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews methodological approaches to the design (or redesign) of the supply chain (SC), including comprehensive approaches (proposals concerning the entire process of designing the SC) and those that deal with four specific aspects of the process (definition of the SC objectives, reverse SC, finance, and generation and use of scenarios) that have a decisive influence on the whole design of the SC. The comprehensive approaches include those based on typologies of products, markets and SCs and those that propose a succession of the stages to follow through the design process. The discussion shows that the use of typologies is not adequate to face SC design and that the methods proposing a succession of stages may suit, provided that they are developed and presented in a manner appropriate to their use for practitioners. The discussion leads also to suggest several research lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation and competition are two major pillars in the information technology (IT) industry. In this paper, we examine the causal relationship between product market competition and innovations in the IT industry. We measure the innovations from both the quantity (number of patents) and the quality (number of non-self citations) perspectives. Based on the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index and natural experiments, we find robust evidence that the competition has a positive effect on the innovations of the IT industry. Specifically, after the exogenous shock to the market (import tariff cuts and thus increased industry competition), the number of patents per IT firm increases by 27.3 percent, and the number of non-self citations per IT firm increases by 38.2 percent on average. The effects are more pronounced in the more competitive sectors. Our study highlights the importance of the competition in the IT industry and suggests that the positive effect of competition on innovation in the IT context is likely to be driven by the parallel search effect. Our findings contribute to the recent policy debate and suggest that reducing import barriers may bring important welfare gains through innovations in the IT industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the initiatives in various jurisdictions to impose ex ante regulation on "digital gatekeepers" – large online platforms that are necessary intermediaries between business users and their customers – have attracted considerable attention, the purpose of this paper is to contribute to the debate on the equally important need to strengthen effective antitrust enforcement in digital markets. The focus is on possible adjustments to the current competition law framework on unilateral conduct. The paper examines four proposals. First, it argues in favour of revisiting the error-cost framework and considering the introduction of presumptions of anticompetitiveness in limited circumstances. Second, it makes the case that competition authorities should make greater use of restorative remedies to reinject lost competition in the market. Third, it discusses the need for greater focus on harms to quality and innovation. Fourth, it argues that when competition has been irreparably harmed, EU competition authorities should consider exploitative cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of multi-sided platforms in the marketplace has spawned a vast amount of research to understand their implications for competition and welfare. This paper presents the scrutiny of one such academic work that classifies multi-sided platforms into "transaction" and "non-transaction" platforms for the purpose of relevant market definition. It has been posited that in the case of "transaction" platforms, there is one all-encompassing relevant market comprising of all sides of a platform. And such a "transaction" platform can compete only with another "transaction" platform. The U.S. Supreme Court in its Amex decision relied upon this classification and elevated the same into law. This paper identifies flaws in this concept by demonstrating that the relevant academic work defines "transaction" too narrowly. The paper takes the swift adoption of the "transaction" platform approach by the Supreme Court as an opportunity to also provide lessons for economics and law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, due to the importance of competition in supply chain, supplier selection is one of the most important issues in competition between manufacturers. Different companies take various criteria into account to select the appropriate suppliers. In this paper, we study a supplier selection problem, considering three key criteria: price, quality and delivery performance. For the first time in this paper a single-echelon supply chain has been studied at which each manufacturer tries not only to optimise his/her own situation but also to remove the other buyers from their optimum points. Hence, this paper considered a new competitive supplier selection problem with some assumption according to real world. In addition, because of new assumptions and complexity of the studied problem, an Imperialist Competitive Algorithm has been used to solve the problem. Finally the success of the mentioned model will be supported by a numerical example and the difference between decision making in competitive and non-competitive market will be shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the 2014 Intel judgment of the General Court of the EU in relation to exclusivity rebates given by dominant ?rms. It distinguishes between the positive issue -- ie the legal standard currently applicable to the assessment of dominant firms' rebates -- and the prospective discussion -- ie the legal standard that should optimally apply to dominant firms rebates. On the positive debate, the paper argues that Intel affirms a modified per se prohibition rule against dominant firms' exclusivity rebates. The scope of this standard is confined to leveraging rebates, and does not cover non-leveraging rebates, which must be analysed under the rule of reason. The paper also draws a distinction between exclusivity obligations and exclusivity options for which agencies and courts should undertake more economic analysis. On the prospective debate, the paper starts from the assumption made by several scholars that Intel endorses a non-welfarist view of the goals of Article 102 TFEU. With this background, it questions which non-welfarist alternative goal can be ascribed to Article 102 TFEU. The paper finds that none of the three classic non-welfarist goals (ie competitive process, consumer choice and raising rivals' costs) can be acclimated in modern EU competition law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan is recognized as a major competitor in world markets but is less well-known as an attractive market in its own right. This paper proposes that with the right strategies it is possible to successfully penetrate the difficult Japanese market. Problems and opportunities presented by the market are discussed, and some of the findings of a survey of Japanese and German mangers in Japan and German-based managers are reviewed. The paper covers the survey findings on market characteristics, barriers to entry, information requirements, factors contributing to success and methods of market entry. German and UK sources of information and advice on the Japanese market are given for those interested in pursuing the matter further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Spatial Economic Analysis is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Recent emphasis on competition and cooperation in supply chains has resulted in the resurgence of game theory as a relevant tool for analyzing such interactions in a supply chain. This paper presents a review of more than 130 papers concerned with game theoretical applications in supply chain management (SCM). We first give a brief summary of the basic solution concepts in noncooperative and cooperative games such as Nash and Stacokelberg equilibria, Nash arbitration scheme and cooperation with sidepayments, the core, the Shapley value and nucleolus. Our review of supply chain-related game theoretical applications is presented in five areas: (i) Inventory games with fixed unit purchase cost, (ii) Inventory games with quantity discounts, (iii) Production and pricing competition, (iv) Games with other attributes, (v) Games with joint decisions on inventory, production/pricing and other attributes. The paper concludes with a summary of our review, suggestions for potential applications of game theory in SCM and an alternative classification of all reviewed papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on development has long underscored the importance of knowledge-based assets and innovation for economic growth and competitiveness. This paper explores an apparent paradox: why did Argentine regulators initially demur in approving the commercialization of genetically-modified (GM) wheat, one of very few products innovated by the country's biotech sector? The answer lies in risk mitigation, but the risks Argentine regulators sought to avoid were not the environmental and health risks typically associated with GM products. Rather, they worried about possible disruptions to agricultural trade if exports were found to be contaminated by an unapproved GM product. I define the kind of risk that Argentine regulators sought to minimize as structural risk—that is, risk issuing from structural constraints a country faces given an unfavorable or dependent position in trade relations. By illuminating how risks emanating from structural constraints particular to Southern states shape regulatory frameworks, this analysis advances our understanding of the Regulatory State of the South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wealth taxes are redistributive policies, which tap into the accumulation of wealth at the top. As the financial burden of these taxes affect a small elite, standard political science arguments suggest that they are popular instruments. Yet, democratic governments have increasingly cut wealth taxes. This paper sheds light on the reasons for their decline. It is the main argument that in the context of financial globalization not only right-wing but also left-wing governments cut wealth taxes as they undermine economic competitiveness, which is in the interest of the whole society. The societal consensus is particularly pronounced under corporatism, where capital and labour establish a reliable agreement not to tax wealth in return for long-term growth and employment. Based on a database for inheritance and net wealth taxes in up to 18 countries since 1970, the findings illustrate the emergence of a societal consensus of wealth tax cuts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the January 2008 issue of "International Review of Applied Economics." It focuses on the importance of the creativity of people for economic capability, competitiveness and development for what creativity impose on the economic policy. Interest is highly put in analysis across the consideration of creative industries as the source of market generated wealth. An invitation for submitting relevant papers is included. Authors who are interested can discuss their ideas among the Guest Editors at the provided website in the article.

Future manufacturing systems need to be more flexible, to embrace tougher and constantly changing market demands. They need to make better use of plant data, ideally utilising all data from the entire plant. Low-level data should be refined to real-time information for decision-making, to facilitate competitiveness through informed and timely decisions. The Line Information System Architecture (LISA), is presented in this paper. It is an event-driven architecture featuring loose coupling, a prototype-oriented information model and formalised transformation services. LISA is designed to enable flexible factory integration and data utilisation. The focus of LISA is on integration of devices and services on all levels, simplifying hardware changes and integration of new smart services as well as supporting continuous improvements on information visualisation and control. The architecture has been evaluated on both real industrial data and industrial demonstrators and it is also being installed at a large automotive company. This article is an extended and revised version of the paper presented at the 2015 IFAC Symposium on Information Control in Manufacturing (INCOM 2015). The paper has been restructured in regards to the order and title of the chapters, and additional information about the integration between devices and services aspects have been added. The introduction and the general structure of the paper now better highlight the contributions of the paper and the uniqueness of the framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to consider the market competition, a new supply chain with one supplier and two retailers is established in this paper. Two retailers employ different AR(1) demand processes, respectively, and an order-up-to inventory policy characterises the inventory decisions. The bullwhip effect in this supply chain is measured under the moving average forecasting technique. We investigate the effects of the lead time, the span of forecast, market competition and the consistency of demand volatility on the bullwhip effect using the algebraic analysis and numerical simulation. Conclusions indicate that different factors lead to the bullwhip effect following different patterns in the supply chain. Moreover, some suggestions are present to help managers to control parameters that yield the lower bullwhip effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the problem of channel choice game in two power-imbalanced supply chains consisting of the leader supply chain and the follower supply chain. We assume that there exists symmetric and asymmetric cost information between the two supply chains, and that the two chains as well as the two members in each chain follow the Stackelberg game setting. We analyse four competition scenarios: both chains are decentralised, where individual members of both supply chains maximise their own profits by independently selecting their price policies; both chains are integrated, where manufacturers and retailers coordinate their decisions to maximise supply chain profits; the leader chain is decentralised and the follower integrated; the leader is integrated and the follower decentralised. The primary objective of this paper is to investigate the influence of power imbalance, information asymmetries, and the degree of product substitutability under channel choice equilibrium. We find that, in contrast to earlier literature where all manufacturers share equal or balanced decision-making power, an integrated distribution channel is the dominant strategy for the leader under symmetric and asymmetric information Stackelberg game. As the degree of product substitutability increases, the follower will gradually switch from integrated distribution channel to decentralised distribution channel; the follower can gain from constructing a decentralised distribution channel as the prediction accuracy of the leader increases. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Water desalination can offer a potential solution for water scarcity. Additionally, desalination technologies that mainly consume electric energy, such as reverse osmosis, can expand the market for electric utilities. Despite such benefits, the main question around desalination remains to be its economic competitiveness. To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of water desalination, this paper calculates two well-known engineering economic metrics: net present value (NPV) and levelized cost of water (LCOW), as applied to large-scale water desalination loads. The paper offers insights on the economic competitiveness of water desalination, compared to its alternatives, i.e., fresh surface and groundwater. The use of NPV is viewed as a planning tool, and LCOW is viewed as an operations tool, which has some significance in project planning. The paper discusses the nexus between operations and planning and offers some contemporary insight into the deployment of desalination worldwide. Additionally, the paper offers analysis on the economic benefits of integrating water desalination load in power systems, both from the point of view of desalination plant owners and electric utilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]