The European Union will be introducing a Europe-wide patent, the so-called Community Patent. Its aim is to foster innovative activity, but strategic effects between firms competing in R&D have not been considered in the official discourse. We show that, even if these are taken into account, the...

We study the regulation of a utility firm which is active in a competitive unregulated sector as well. If the firm jointly operates its activities in the two markets, it enjoys economies of scope, whose size is the firm’s private information and is unknown to the regulator and the rival firms....

Our concern is about a firm-specific industrial policy. When R&D subsidies or taxes are differentiated among firms, the question arises which firms in an industry should receive such support. We analyse a situation where firms differ in their R&D technologies in two distinct ways: they differ...

This paper analyses the effects of universal service obligations, such as uniform pricing, coverage constraints and price caps, on markets newly opened to competition, e.g. broadband services. We show that the requirement of uniform pricing has strong repercussions on coverage decisions. Imposed...

This Paper analyses the impact of R&D subsidies on incumbent firms to introduce new goods. We are especially interested in investigating various consequences of government subsidies for R&D, provided to firms that offer products of different qualities. This study examines the incentives of...

We propose a two-sided model with two competing Internet platforms, and a continuum of Content Providers (CPs). We study the effect of a net neutrality regulation on capacity investments in the market for Internet access, and on innovation in the market for content. Under the alternative...

We study the effects of the car scrapping subsidies in Europe during the financial crisis. We make use of a rich data set of all car models sold in nine European countries, observed at a monthly level during 2005-2011. We employ a difference-in-differences approach, exploiting the fact that...

We estimate the effect on economic development of China's industrial policy, in particular, the establishment of Special Economic Zones (SEZ). We use data from a panel of 276 Chinese cities and prefectures from 1988 to 2010. Our difference-in-difference estimator exploits the variation in the...

Business support policies designed to raise productivity and employment are common worldwide, but rigorous micro-econometric evaluation of their causal effects is rare. We exploit multiple changes in the area-specific eligibility criteria for a major program to support manufacturing jobs...

The much-studied relationship between domestic rivalry and export performance consists of those supporting a national-champion rationale, and those supporting a rivalry rationale. While the empirical literature generally supports the positive effects of domestic rivalry, the national-champion...