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Government agencies typically have a certain freedom to choose among different possible courses of action. This paper studies agency decision-making on priorities in a principal-agent framework with multi-tasking. The agency head (the principal) has discretion over part of the agency's budget to incentivize his staff (agents) in the pick-up of cases. The head is concerned with society's benefits from the agency's overall performance, but also with the organization's public image as formed from its case record and various non-case specific activities. Based on their talent and the contracts offered by the head, staff officials choose which type of task to pursue: complex major, yet difficult to complete cases with an uncertain outcome, or basic minor and simple cases with a much higher probability of success. The size of the agency's discretionary budget influences no t only the scale, but also the type of tasks it will engage in. Social welfare is non-monotonic and discontinuous in the agency's budget. Small changes in the budget may cause extensive restructuring from major to minor tasks, or vice versa. A budget cut can improve welfare more than extra budget would, even if resources are below the welfare-maximizing level. For lower binding budgets, the head continues to suboptimally incentivize work on complex tasks, when the agency should have shifted down to simpler tasks. Yet a reluctant head may need to be nudged with more resources to pursue productive cases. In determining the discretionary space of the agency head, government can limit the extraction of resources, but thereby also benefits less from the head's expertise. Antitrust authorities serve as one illustration of policy implications for institutional design.

This study investigates dynamic incentives to select patients for hospitals that are remunerated according to a prospective payment system of the diagnosis-related group (DRG) type. Using a model with patients differing in severity within a DRG, we show that price dynamics depend on the extent of hospital altruism and the relation between patients' severity and benefit. Upwards and downwards price movements over time are both possible. In a steady state, DRG prices are unlikely to give optimal incentives to treat patients. Depending on the level of altruism, too few or too many patients are treated. DRG pricing may also give incentives to treat low-severity patients even though high-severity patients should be treated. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Through this study, I have intended to make a synthetized analysis of the social economy sector which, in the current economic context of Romania, has a strong influence on the public policies framework in the field of employment growth in social economy. A complex, scientific and relevant material for the issue discussed here has been used, along with a series of official statistical data in the field of social economy. The scientific approach taken has dwelt upon some conceptual distinctions which should correctly position the place and the role that the entitites may have within social economy and which will generate benefits for the entire society. The scientific approach of conceptual delimitations went on to correctly position the place and the role it may have in the social economy entities which will generate benefits for society.

Predatory pricing--a deliberate strategy of pricing aggressively in order to eliminate competitors--is one of the more contentious areas of antitrust policy and its existence and efficacy are widely debated. The purpose of this paper is to formally characterize predatory pricing in a modern industry dynamics framework. We endogenize competitive advantage and industry structure through learning-by-doing. We first show that predation-like behavior arises routinely in our model. Equilibria involving predation-like behavior typically coexist with equilibria involving much less aggressive pricing. To disentangle predatory pricing from mere competition for efficiency on a learning curve we next decompose the equilibrium pricing condition. Our decomposition provides us with a coherent and flexible way to develop alternative characterizations of a firm’s predatory pricing incentives, some of which are motivated by the existing literature while others are novel. We finally measure the impact of the predatory pricing incentives on industry structure, conduct, and performance. We show that forcing a firm to ignore these incentives in setting its price can have a large impact and that this impact stems from eliminating equilibria with predation-like behavior. Along with the predation-like behavior, however, a fair amount of competition for the market is eliminated. Overall, the distinction between predatory pricing and pricing aggressively to pursue efficiency is closely related to the distinction between the advantage-building and advantage-denying motives that our decomposition of the equilibrium pricing condition isolates and measures.

We document the numerical challenges we experienced estimating random-coefficient demand models as in Berry, Levinsohn, and Pakes (1995) using two well-known data sets and a thorough optimization design. The optimization algorithms often converge at points where the first- and second-order optimality conditions fail. There are also cases of convergence at local optima. On convergence, the variation in the values of the parameter estimates translates into variation in the models' economic predictions. Price elasticities and changes in consumer and producer welfare following hypothetical merger exercises vary at least by a factor of 2 and up to a factor of 5. © 2014 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Our survey reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on all alternative policies to promote the deployment of new fiber-based communications infrastructure. Since such investment is expected to induce substantial positive externalities, dynamic efficiency becomes a particularly important policy goal. The available policies refer to i) different kinds of ex ante sector-specific regulations including cost-based access regulations as well as softer regulations such as regulatory holidays or geographically differentiated regulations, ii) deregulatory approaches based on effective competition law implementation and competitive market structures including allowance of co-investment models, and iii) public subsidies to cover non-profitable (“white”) areas. Our survey identifies the most significant research gaps, finding that numerous studies related to the impact of access regulations exist, whereas only a much smaller branch of literature addresses the impact of competition policies, and even fewer studies analyze the impact of public subsidies on new communications deployment. Moreover, our work allows for a generic framework for policy recommendations that identifies the comparative advantages of the individual policy options for different market structures and for varying degrees of externalities. We find that public subsidies are the dominant policy alternative in white areas, whereas access regulations can be the preferred policy in white or “grey” areas, where only monopoly structure or co-investment models lead to private investment. Deregulatory policies might be preferable in grey areas, if there is sufficient pressure from competitive outside options and if competition law is strong. Finally, deregulatory policies including soft regulation are the dominant policy in “black” areas, where several independent infrastructure operators exist.

This paper examines cartel overcharges for the European market. Using a sample of 191 overcharge estimates and several parametric and semi- parametric estimation procedures, the impact of different cartel charac- teristics and the market environment on the magnitude of overcharges is analyzed. The mean and median overcharge rates are found to be 20.70 percent and 18.37 percent of the selling price and the average cartel du- ration is 8.35 years. Certain cartel characteristics and the geographic region of cartel operation influence the level of overcharges considerably. Furthermore, empirical evidence suggests that the currently existing fine level of the EU Guidelines is too low to achieve optimal deterrence.

According to the European Commission, Svenska Kraftnät, the Swedish network operator, might have violated competition rules by limiting cross-border transmission capacity to relieve congestion within Sweden. Eventually, the case was settled and Svenska Kraftnät offered commitments to address the Commission's concerns. As an interim remedy, it committed to reduce transmission flow of electricity on internal network bottlenecks primarily by introducing national measures and by not reducing interconnection capacity. As a final remedy, Svenska Kraftnät agreed to split the Swedish market into multiple price zones. Congestion within Sweden would then be solved by adjusting the prices of those zones. We analyse the economic effects of the alleged abuse and the remedy package. We make three observations. First, it might be socially optimal to reduce cross-border capacity in response to internal congestion. Hence, without an in-depth economic analysis the Commission risked preventing efficient behaviour. Second, the interim remedy of handling internal congestion primarily by national measures is not socially optimal, and it cannot be ruled out that it reduces overall welfare. Third, even though splitting the market into price zones may improve allocative efficiency within Sweden, it does not prevent Svenska Kraftnät from potential manipulation of cross-border transmission capacity.

Implementation of competition policies is one of the most recommended strategies to developing countries as a tool for achieving economic development. Using a panel dataset of over 100 countries and 7 years (from 2005-2011), I estimate the effect of competition on economic development, and also determine which of the comprehensive policy factors are the most relevant for increasing competition. A fixed effects instrumental variable approach is used. I find that competition intensity positively impacts economic development. The estimate is highly significant when effectiveness of antimonopoly policy and squared years of experience handling competition law are used as instruments for competition intensity. Political stability is shown to be a determinant for higher achievement in development. Macroeconomic environment and financial market development are also significant factors that contribute to higher economic development. Less developed countries should work intensively to improve their institutional quality and implement pro-competitive policies that are not only related to competition laws.

This paper investigates whether and under what conditions the working of cooperative firms can be affected by competition law or market-enhancing regulations. The nature of collective benefits sought by different types of cooperative enterprises is analysed to show whether and how a tension may arise between the market mechanism and the mechanisms through which alternative collective benefits are attained by cooperative firms. On the whole, market-enhancing regulations have an ambiguous impact both on the working of cooperatives and on social efficiency. While benefitting society, a market enhancement reduces the scope for cooperative firms aiming at reducing the deadweight loss in imperfectly competitive markets. A similar conclusion holds if the cooperative firm aims at protecting an investment decision from a hold-up problem, provided that the market enhancement enlarges the set of outside options for the firm’s stakeholders. A market enlargement has a positive impact both on the working of cooperatives and on social efficiency when the aim of the cooperative firm is to prevent shirking in team production. In contrast, a negative impact ensues, with adverse consequences both for social efficiency and the cooperative firm, when the collective benefit sought by the latter is to overcome asymmetric information, as typically happens in the case of credit cooperatives.

This paper analyzes the incentive for a cartel agreement between hospitals. For this purpose we extend a quality competition model developed by Montefiori (2005). We investigate that collusion on a low provided quality level will lead to higher profits for both hospitals. Therefore both hospitals benefit from an agreement. Further we can see if one hospital breaks the cartel rules, while the other stick to the agreement, the defrauding hospital can make additional profits. In addition we study the profits under an infinite time horizon. Under a given specific strategy played by the hospitals, we obtain a particular discount factor under which an agreement still holds.

This paper discusses the regulation of pharmacists from an economic perspective, focusing on licensing, price and fee regulation, advertising restrictions and rules on exercise of the profession, and restrictions on business structure. A comparative overview is presented of the most common forms of regulation of pharmacists that are found today in the EU (and to some extent Canada, China and the US) and to investigate whether there is an economic rationale for these rules. Despite the rather strict regulatory frameworks found in all of these jurisdictions, in various countries there is a discussion on how to improve or increase the level of pharmaceutical care. The author suggests in that respect that changes in the reimbursement system may provide a better solution than stricter entry or conduct requirements.

In November 2011 Sweden abolished the uniform national electricity price and introduced separate price zones. This was the result of an antitrust settlement between the Commission and the Swedish network operator, which was accused of discriminating between domestic and export electricity transmission services and segmenting the internal market. Based on this case, we show how the Commission uses competition law enforcement to foster market integration in the energy sector. We find that, even though the Commission’s action under competition rules was contrived and lacked economic depth, the commitment package provides an economically sound, longterm solution to network access and congestion management in Sweden. Such a quick and far-reaching change of Swedish congestion management could not have been achieved by Swedish policymakers or enforcement of the EU sector-specific regulation.

Best practices of corporate governance in SOE as they are recognized globally can reveal to be less effective in modern Russia, since under expanding regulatory constraints the latter provide higher impact on companies' performance and the benefits of ultimate owners, in contrast with the decreasing influence of managerial efforts. The article considers two examples of regulatory requirements important for most part of Russian SOE. They are codification of procurement rules and commercial (or 'trade') policies, prescribing codified rules of supplying contracts.

This article investigates the structure and behavior of the participants in the food wholesale market in Germany. The question to be answered is: Do Cash&Carry (C&C) stores form a separate, relevant market? The Federal Antitrust Authority’s (FAA) views on the demarcation of relevant markets illustrate the necessity to bring forward this issue. The FAA seems to insufficiently consider and model the actual structure and behavior of the market participants. To answer the question if suppliers are substitutable one has to use the demand-oriented perspective of wholesale format determination and empirical research. The respondents in our survey were the purchasing managers of hotels, restaurants and caterers, as well as the purchasing managers of traders: full-range food retailers, specialty food retailers, specialty outlets for large-scale consumers, kiosks, white pumpers and peddling. The results reveal that the null hypothesis has to be rejected. Every criterion used in this study to characterize the use and importance of individual procurement sources shows that the C&C wholesale trade is far removed from holding a position that would justify being described as a separate, relevant market. C&C stores belong to a larger number of procurement sources where hotels, restaurants and caterers, as well as traders cover their regular demand. In addition to the so-called delivery wholesale trade the other suppliers also fulfill the delivery function, including C&C wholesaling and the single line or specialty wholesale trade. Hence, anyone making decisions relating to merger control or to control of abuse of dominant position, such as the FAA Authority, needs empirical information on which market the players actually belong to.

In the last decades, more and more countries have enacted competition laws, understanding the importance of this process in providing a normal functioning of the economy. Analyzing competition policy effectiveness is important not only because of the recent extent of the phenomenon, but also because of the impact of competition policy effectiveness on economic development and, in the current economic climate, on the economic recovery process. For this reason, quantitative evaluation for competition policy effectiveness became very useful as data handling and understanding the whole phenomenon are easier this way and an international perspective is provided. This was made possible by various international institutions that have created a system of aggregated indicators for the evaluation of competition law enforcement and competition advocacy (perceived effectiveness). The purpose of our research is to identify the macroeconomic factors that influence the effectiveness of competition law implementation within the European Union Member States. We have tasted the influence of 13 macroeconomic, using panel data methodology and data from the last four years. We obtained ß coefficients statistically significant only for 11 of them. The results are consistent with prior analyzed studies and economic logic: positive influence from market division, intensity of local competition, ethical behavior of firms, strength of auditing and reporting standards, efficiency of legal framework in settling disputes, protection of minority shareholders'(tm) interests, public trust of politicians, economic dimension and market size and negative influence from corruption level and diversion of public funds. Based on the achieved results we can perform an analysis of principal components leading to causal space reduction with minimal information loss and without informational redundancy, creating the premises for building a model that explains competition policy effectiveness through macroeconomic factors.

More and more academic journals adopt an open-access policy, by which articles are accessible free of charge, while publication costs are recovered through author fees. We study the consequences of this open access policy on a journal’s quality standard. If the journal’s objective was to maximize social welfare, open access would be optimal as long as the positive externalities generated by its diffusion exceed the marginal cost of distribution. However, we show that if an open access journal has a different objective (such as maximizing readers’ utility, the impact of the journal or its profit), it tends to choose a quality standard below the socially efficient level.

During the first quarter of commercial operation of the Philippine wholesale electricity market, an unexpected surge in clearing prices led to an investigation of public utilities accused of collusion. The paper examines the regulatory response to the first antitrust case in the electricity market. Using actual offers submitted by generators to the market operator and applying a variant of competitive benchmark analysis, the paper traces the price surge to strategic bidding and capacity withholding by public generators.

The social sector or social economy is still in the developing stage and the concept of social entrepreneurship is just in the emergence phase in Romania. There is still a lot to do in this field, in order to create sustainability among the actors of the social economy or social sector. The paper will attempt to emphasize the differences between entrepreneurship in NGO’s and social entrepreneurship and clarify the two terms in relationship with the Romanian social sector. It will discuss what needs to be taken into consideration for the future development of this sector in Romania, in the context of EU membership.

In a two-country international trade model with oligopolistic competition, we study the conditions on market structure and trade costs under which a merger policy designed to benefit domestic consumers is too tough or too lenient from the viewpoint of the foreign country. We calibrate the model to match industry-level data in the U.S. and Canada. Our results suggest that at present levels of trade costs, merger policy is too tough in the vast majority of sectors. We also quantify the resulting externalities and study the impact of different regimes of coordinating merger policies at varying levels of trade costs.

Through an empirical analysis of firms in Japan, this paper investigates to what extent the public interest and the private interest theories, respectively, explain the actual regulatory process. Our estimation findings are as follows. First, the explanatory power of the public interest theory is higher in non-public utility industries, while that of the private interest theory is higher in public utility industries. Second, rapidly growing industries become less regulated as they no longer need government protection. Third, highly competitive industries become more regulated so as to retain profit for individual companies. Fourth, price level has different implications among industries. The negative coefficient in non-public utility industries supports the public interest theory, while the positive coefficient in public utility industries supports the private interest theory.

Judging by only economic incentives, Malaysian financial institutions (particularly banks) should completely ignore the Competition Act. The data show that Malaysian banks probably benefit from anticompetitive behaviour. Political and family connections likely facilitate such behaviour. Given that the Malaysian Competition Commission will likely lack the resources to investigate and sanction anti-competitive behaviour in Malaysia’s banking industry – the banks’ best response to the Act probably consists of ignoring it. Maximum fines of 10 million ringgit and revenue-tied penalties of only 10% of worldwide revenue mean that banks still have strong incentives to engage in anticompetitive behaviour and to pay any low fine that might be levied. The best compliance programme for banks in Malaysia likely consists of actions that avoid detection rather than detecting and preventing anticompetitive behaviour. Private rights of action are unlikely to provide any stronger economic incentives for Malaysian banks to adopt strong antitrust compliance programmes and internal audit programmes. By staying the course, Malaysian banks can continue to earn about 15 billion ringgits (approximately US$4.6 billion in anticompetitive rents).

Competition is a basic mechanism of the market economy involving supply and demand. The legislative framework of the European competition policy is provided by the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU)(Articles 101–109). Without an effective EU competition policy, the Single Market cannot reach its full potential. Competition policy is also crucial in allowing the EU to crack down on abuses of dominant position, cartels and concerted practices that harm consumers. To be in a dominant position is not itself illegal. A dominant company has a special responsibility to ensure that its conduct does not distort competition.

This paper develops a framework for estimating preferences in two-sided matching markets with non-transferable utility using only data on observed matches. Unlike single-agent choices, matches depend on the preferences of other agents in the market. I use pairwise stability together with a vertical preference restriction on one side of the market to identify preference parameters for both sides of the market. Recovering the distribution of preferences is only possible in an environment with many-to-one matching. These methods allow me to investigate two issues concerning the centralized market for medical residents. First, I examine the antitrust allegation that the clearinghouse restrains competition, resulting in salaries below the marginal product of labor. Counterfactual simulations of a competitive wage equilibrium show that residents’ willingness to pay for desirable programs results in estimated salary markdowns ranging from $23,000 to $43,000 below the marginal product of labor, with larger markdowns at more desirable programs. Therefore, a limited number of positions at high quality programs, not the design of the match, is the likely cause of low salaries. Second, I analyze wage and supply policies aimed at increasing the number of residents training in rural areas while accounting for general equilibrium effects from the matching market. I find that financial incentives increase the quality, but not the number of rural residents. Quantity regulations increase the number of rural trainees, but the impact on resident quality depends on the design of the intervention.

The paper seeks to fill the void in the empirical economics literature of U.S. antimerger policy. A new empirical measure of relief secured in a Section 7 case is proposed. The extent of obtained relief is modeled as a fraction of the competitive overlap subject to structural divestiture. The model of determination of the relative size and scope of divestiture is applied to a sample of recent Section 7 cases. The estimated model is reasonably successful at predicting the outcomes of several out-of-sample cases.

There is a discrepancy between Europe and the United States on whether margin squeeze is a relevant question for competition law and policy. Beyond this question, it is unclear whether law and the Cartel Office can detect margin squeeze, assuming it is necessary to look into the matter. In Germany, politicians have decided the given rule against margin squeeze should not be abolished, especially because of problems in the gasoline market. This paper discusses a comprehensive microeconomic new explanation on margin squeeze, and discusses some of the problems used to detect margin squeeze in the gasoline market. After comparing theoretical shortcuts, practical challenges and efforts towards enforcement with expected benefits, this paper concludes competition law should ignore the margin squeeze problem.

International audience; Mission-driven nonprofit organizations compete for donations through fundraising activities. Such competition can lead to inefficient outcomes, if nonprofits impose externalities on each others' output. This paper studies the sustainability of fundraising coordination agreements, using a game-theoretic model of coalition formation. We show that three key characteristics determine the stability of cooperation between nonprofits: (i) the alliance formation rule, (ii) the extent to which fundraising efforts are strategic complements/substitutes, and (iii) whether deviation from the agreements is by an individual or by a group of nonprofits. We analyze how the interaction of these three features induces (or not) the stability of Pareto-optimal full coordination in fundraising.

We analyze a model where an antitrust authority delegates to an audit inspector the mission of gathering the sufficient information to condemn a cartel. The authority has two instruments at her disposal: rewarding the inspector with a proportion of the collected fine or providing him with information which enhances the probability of the success of the prosecution. More precisely, we explore the efficiency consequences of a contest between the audit inspector and the cartel. Both of them bid to win the contest by expending efforts. We show that the race issue depends positively on the financial incentives proposed to the inspector but the impact of an increase of the level of the fine, to be paid once an illegal agreement is detected, is ambiguous. Moreover, we show that the optimal combination of the two instruments consists in two regimes. When the marginal cost of providing the relevant information is relatively high, the antitrust authority equally shares the collected fine and does not provide the inspector with any information. Conversely, when this marginal cost is relatively small, the authority uses the two instruments. She has to provide him with the maximum level of information consistent with winning the contest with certainty.

We study the effects of a hospital merger using a spatial competition framework with semialtruistic hospitals that invest in quality and expend cost-containment effort facing regulated prices. We find that the merging hospitals always reduce quality, whereas non-merging hospitals respond by increasing (reducing) quality if qualities are strategic substitutes (complements). A merger leads to higher average treatment cost efficiency and, if qualities are strategic substitutes, might also increase average quality in the market. If a merger leads to hospital closure, the resulting effect on quality is positive (negative) for all hospitals in the market if qualities are strategic substitutes (complements). Whether qualities are strategic substitutes or complements depends on the degree of altruism, the effectiveness of cost-containment effort, and the degree of cost substitutability between quality and treatment volume., COMPETE, QREN, FEDER, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)

Os táxis não podem ser baratos. Decorre de ser conduzido por um profissional com toda a flexibilidade dos carros, menos vários inconvenientes. E, no entanto, ... por que não? Os Taxistas reclamam sobre o preço proibitivo do gasóleo, que não cobre tarifas medíocres. A raiz e a verdade da questão encontram‑se no serviço: clientes, quilómetros ... e na falta deles. O mercado pode ser descrito como um cartel de entrada livre – gerido por associações do setor, toleradas pelo regulador – capturado, onde nem a entrada nem a saída fazem mover o preço. Para os consumidores, é péssimo. Enquanto isso, lucros de monopólio são desperdiçados entre o máximo de remediados, que mal conseguem sobreviver.Melhor seria se a regulação evoluísse da captura por organizações dos motoristas para um conjunto de licenças e preços definidos de acordo com os níveis de tráfego, após um choque de preço negativo, que apressaria a eliminação do excesso de oferta.Será que isso importa? Os táxis podem ser preciosos para fazer a ponte entre os transportes públicos e o ambientalmente frágil e caro transporte de carro.

I examine the private and social efficiency of patent pools in a setting in which owners of intellectual property (IP), are both vertically and horizontally related. The relationship is vertical through the ownership of complementary IP and horizontal in that at least one member owns a competing product. For this hybrid structure – referred to as overlapping ownership – I analyze the interplay between two organizational decisions: the standard-setting process in which participants choose a product type (indexed by its differentiation from the current standard), and the subsequent patent pooling decision. Consumers can be better off with patent pooling as a result of lower prices (the complements effect) and greater product variety (the differentiation effect), even when a pool member is also a competitor of the new standard. However, in comparing new product collaborations across ownership regimes, consumers prefer those that admit no overlapping ownership. These results yield insights for antitrust rules promoting efficient IP agreements.

Although the future socio-economic benefits of a new fibre-based (“next generation access”, NGA) telecommunications infrastructure seem to be uncontroversial, a universal NGA coverage appears to be a rather unrealistic objective without government intervention. We contend, however, that the current contract practice of fixing ex ante targets for network expansion is inefficient given the uncertainty about future returns on NGA infrastructure-based services and the public authorities’ incomplete information about the capital costs of the network provider. This paper puts forward to delegate the choice of the network expansion to the NGA provider.

Self-regulatory organizations (SROs) can be found in education, healthcare, and other not-for-profit sectors as well as in the accounting, financial, and legal professions. DeMarzo et al. (2005) show theoretically that SROs can create monopoly market power for their affiliated agents, but that governmental oversight, even if less efficient than oversight by the SRO, can largely offset the market power. We provide an experimental test of this conjecture. For carefully rationalized parameterizations and implementation details, we find that the predictions of DeMarzo et al. (2005) are borne out.

We study the effects of cooperative wage setting in industries that use two different types of labor. In particular, we consider a two-stage game where firms hire non-specialized workers in a perfectly competitive labor market and specialized workers that are more productive and expensive, but whose wages can be cooperatively determined by firms. It is shown that semi-collusion leads to lower wages and employment of specialized labor, lower production levels and higher prices, due to the elimination of the business stealing effect, labor force stealing effect and as a result of a dynamic effect that is specific to semi-collusive games.

This paper tests whether upstream R&D cooperation leads to downstream collusion. We consider an oligopolistic setting where firms enter in research joint ventures (RJVs) to lower production costs or coordinate on collusion in the product market. We show that a sufficient condition for identifying collusive behavior is a decline in the market share of RJV-participating firms, which is also necessary and sufficient for a decrease in consumer welfare. Using information from the US National Cooperation Research Act, we estimate a market share equation correcting for the endogeneity of RJV participation and R&D expenditures. We find robust evidence that large networks between direct competitors – created through firms being members in several RJVs at the same time – are conducive to collusive outcomes in the product market which reduce consumer welfare. By contrast, RJVs among non-competitors are efficiency enhancing.

We analyze firms' incentives to bundle and tie in the telecommunications industry. As a first step, we develop a discrete-choice demand model where firms sell products that may combine several services in bundles, and consumers choose assortments of different types of products available from various vendors. Our approach extends standard discrete-choice demand models of differentiated product to allow for both flexible substitution patterns and to map demand for each choice alternative onto the demand for each service or bundle that a firm may sell. We exploit these properties to examine bundling behavior when firms choose: (i) prices, and (ii) which products to sell. Using consumer-level data and survey data from the Portuguese telecommunications industry, we estimate our demand model and identify firm incentives to bundle and tie in this industry. We use the model to perform several policy related conterfactuals and evaluate their impact on prices and product provision.

Mission-driven nonprofit organizations compete for donations through fundraising activities. Such competition can lead to inefficient outcomes, if nonprofits impose externalities on each others' output. This paper studies the sustainability of fundraising coordination agreements, using a game-theoretic model of coalition formation. Three key characteristics determine the stability of cooperation: (i) the alliance formation rule, (ii) the extent to which fundraising efforts are strategic complements/substitutes, and (iii) whether deviation from the agreements is by an individual or by a group of nonprots. We also characterize necessary and su¢ cient conditions for the stability of Pareto-optimal full coordination in fundraising.

Are business associations - private, formal, nonprofit organizations designed to promote the common interests of their members - positive or negative for the economy and overall welfare? Scholars from institutional and organizational economics, on the one side, and from industrial organization, law & economics, and public choice, on the other side, have given different answers to this question, which is instrumental for policy making. We construct a model that endogenizes association membership of firms and the main functions of associations, which can have positive or negative spillovers on the economy. We derive predictions regarding associations’ functions and their net welfare effects, depending on the level of property rights securitization, which are in line with empirical observations.

In this paper, we discuss from an economic perspective two alternative views of restrictions of competition by sports associations. The horizontal approach views such restrictions as an agreement among the participants of a sports league with the sports association merely representing an organization executing the horizontal cooperation. In contrast, the vertical approach views the sports association as being a dominant upstream firm enjoying a monopoly position on the market stage for competition organizing services, an important input for the actual product – the sports game. Taking the recent financial fair play (FFP) initiative by UEFA (the Union of European Football Associations) as an example, we demonstrate that the different views lead to different assessments of restrictive effects and, thus, matter for competition policy decisions. The economic story of the potential restrictive effect of FFP on players’ and player agents’ income may fit more plausibly to the horizontal approach, whereas the potentially anticompetitive foreclosure and deterrence effects of FFP may be economically more soundly reasoned by taking the vertical view.

The 2010 Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission Horizontal Merger Guidelines lay out a new standard for assessing proposed mergers in markets with differentiated products. This new standard is based on a measure of ``upward pricing pressure,'' (UPP) and the calculation of a ``gross upward pricing pressure index'' (GUPPI) in turn relies on a ``diversion ratio,'' which measures the fraction of consumers of one product that switch to another product when the price of the first product increases. One way to calculate a diversion ratio is to estimate own- and cross-price elasticities. An alternative (and more direct) way to gain insight into diversion is to exogenously remove a product from the market and observe the set of products to which consumers actually switch. In the past, economists have rarely had the ability to experiment in this way, but more recently, the growth of digital and online markets, combined with enhanced IT, has improved our ability to conduct such experiments. In this paper, we analyze the snack food market, in which mergers and acquisitions have been especially active in recent years. We exogenously remove six top-selling products (either singly or in pairs) from vending machines and analyze subsequent changes in consumers' purchasing patterns, firm profits, diversion ratios, and upward pricing pressure. Using both nonparametric analyses and structural demand estimation, we find significant diversion to remaining products. Both diversion and the implied upward pricing pressure differ significantly across manufacturers, and we identify cases in which the GUPPI would imply increased regulatory scrutiny of a proposed merger.

This is a discussion of the manuscript "Local News Online: Aggregators, Geo-Targeting and the Market for Local News" by L. George and C. Hogendorn, presented at the 11th Workshop on Media Economics, which was held at the Recanati Business School, Tel-Aviv University, October 9-10, 2013.

In the United States, as in most industrialized nations, aggregate technological advancement declined during the 1970s and early 1980s. The U.S. Congress was quick to respond to this down turn by passing a number of technology- and innovation-related initiatives, one of which was the National Cooperative Research Act (NCRA) of 1984. It has been argued that this policy response is an example of government acting as entrepreneur because the enabling legislation was both innovative and characterized by entrepreneurial risk. In this paper we examine empirically covariates with the trend in the formation of research joint ventures (RJVs) promulgated by the NCRA and with the probability that a RJV will have an international research partner. We find that RJV formations seem to increase in times when industrial investments in research and development (R&D) decrease, and we conclude that RJVs might thus be a substitute for internal R&D activity. We also find that the probability of a RJV having an international research partner increases as the membership size of the RJV increases. We conclude that as membership size increases, the ability of any one member to appropriate the collective research contributions from the other members, and thus gain a competitive advantage, decreases. Thus, the cost of including in the RJV an international partner, which we argue could represent a potential intellectual capital leakage, decreases.

The fight against cartels is a priority for antitrust authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. What differs between the EU and the US is not the basic toolkit for achieving deterrence, but to whom it is targeted. In the EU, pecuniary sanctions against the firm are the only instruments available to the Commission, while in the US criminal sanctions are also widely employed. The aim of this paper is to compare two different types of fines levied on managerial firms when they collude. We consider a profit based fine as opposed to a delegation based fine, with the latter targeting the manager in a more direct way. Under the assumption of revenue equivalence, we find that the delegation based fine, although distortive, is more effective in deterring cartels than the profit based one. When evaluating social welfare, a trade-off between deterrence and output distortion can arise. However, if the antitrust authority focuses on consumer surplus, then the delegation based fine is to be preferred.

The Post Danmark judgment may cast the light on the interpretations by the EU Court of Justice of crucial dimensions of the competition policy as: selective price cuts, above-cost rebates, costs test for exclusionary abuses with common costs. As we see one of the main interests of the decision lies on the cost criteria used by the Court to determine if a given price practice may exclude a competitor as efficient as the incumbent. In other words, does Post Danmark constitutes a real step towards the appropriation by the Court of Justice of the more economic approach promoted by the Commission and, more broadly, is really the logic of the Court coherent with an effects-based approach? Does Post Danmark conciliates the traditional decisional practice of the Court with the new principles of competition policy enforcement advocated by the Commission since the issuance of its February 2009 guidelines, relative to the exclusionary practices of dominant undertakings?

The effect of competition among self-regulatory organizations (SRO) on the efficiency of the corresponding goods and services markets is considered. It is shown that under certain conditions the competition among SRO worsens the quality of the goods and services and leads to decrease in consumers’ welfare. Moreover, the distinctive feature of the competition among SRO in comparison with other types of regulator competition is that even introduction of alternative government control does not improve the situation. The proposals are formulated for self-regulatory markets’ structure and conditions change in order to reduce negative effects of SRO competition.

This paper empirically evaluates the effects of a merger between the two largest book retail chains in the UK. We build an original dataset of book titles with data on the prices at the store level and at the national level. We then apply difference-in-differences techniques to assess the impact of the merger. A key feature of the books market is that titles become obsolete very quickly. Therefore, we compare different titles before and after the merger in an hedonic approach. Since retail mergers may have either local or national effects (or both) according to the level at which retail chains set prices, we undertake an ex post assessment of the impact of the merger at both aggregation levels. At the local level, we compare the changes in the average price charged before and after the merger in the shops located in overlap areas (i.e. areas where both chains were present before the merger) and in non-overlap areas (i.e. areas where only one chain was present before the merger). Our results do not show any significant difference between non-overlap and overlap areas where the merger could have been expected to generate the strongest effect. To investigate the effects of the merger at the national level, we employ two distinct control groups, namely the competitors and the top-selling titles. In both cases we find that the merger did not result in an increase in prices at the national level.

Self-regulatory organizations (SROs) can be found in education, healthcare, and other not-for-profit sectors as well as in the accounting, financial, and legal professions. DeMarzo et al. (2005) show theoretically that SROs can create monopoly market power for their affiliated agents, but that governmental oversight, even if less efficient than oversight by the SRO, can largely offset the market power. We provide an experimental test of this conjecture. For carefully rationalized parameterizations and implementation details, we find that the predictions of DeMarzo et al. (2005) are borne out.

In a simple model of network industry, where an upstream monopolist provides an essential input for downstream service supply, we analyze the competitive settings arising in the downstream market under alternative regulatory frameworks; we combine structural (i.e. vertical integration, functional/ownership separation) and conduct (discriminatory and nondiscriminatory access) regulatory remedies. Downstream firms are characterized by different levels of cost efficiency in the provision of the service. We show that the degree of heterogeneity in firmsÕ cost efficiency is critical to the determination of the amount of competition that emerges in the downstream market, and of the efficiency of the industry. We show that i) when downstream firms are significantly heterogenous, discriminatory access fees may be socially desirable and ii) vertical integration is always socially preferable.

Decisions of national competition authorities have important effects on other jurisdictions. We provide a framework to quantify the domestic and cross-border effects of mergers, and to draw conclusions for the coordination of national merger policies. We develop a two-country model with many sectors. In each sector, producers vary in terms of their marginal costs, and are engaged in Cournot competition. We allow for profitable mergers to take place subject to the non-violation of a given national competition policy. Because of trade costs and perceived differences in qualities between domestic and foreign products, mergers may have different consumer surplus effects in the home and the foreign country. We calibrate the model using data for the year 2002 for 167 manufacturing sectors in the U.S. and Canada. We choose parameters to match relevant moments in the data, including industry sales, concentration ratios and trade flows. We find that in the majority of industries a merger approval policy based on domestic consumer surplus is too restrictive from the viewpoint of the neighboring country. We also show that adopting a supra-national policy that approves a merger if and only if it increases the sum of consumer surplus in the two countries would lead to significant gains for U.S. consumers but hurt consumers in Canada. These results highlight the difficulties in coordinating national competition policies in a way acceptable to all participating countries.