This paper studies the impact of legal unbundling vs ownership unbundling on the incentives of a network operator to invest and maintain its assets. We consider an industry where the upstream firm first chooses the size of a network, while several downstream firms then compete in selling goods...

The EU faces challenges in reforming the Gas and Electricity Directives to implement the single market in electricity and gas. The Paper argues that there is unfinished business in the areas of regulation, restructuring, encouraging proper risk management through contracting, and designing...

The German potable water supply industry is regarded as being highly fragmented, thus inhibiting high potentials for efficiency improvements through consolidation. Focusing on a hypothetical restructuring of the industry, we apply Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to analyze the potential...

In most developed countries, the provision of water is organized at a local level. The costs and tariffs vary significantly, even between adjacent water utilities. Such heterogeneity is an obvious indication of the sector’s overall inefficiency and stresses a need for institutional...

The paper discusses economic theories of harm for anti-competitive margin squeeze by unregulated and regulated vertically integrated firms. We review both predation and foreclosure theories, as well as the mere exploitation of upstream market power. We show that foreclosure provides an...

We generalize von der Fehr and Harbord's (1993) multi-unit auction model for the case of a deterministic demand allowing for any technology mix and elastic demand in order to account for demand side bidding. We obtain a general characterization of the equilibrium and show that the Cournot model...

Should arbitrators adjudicate on the basis of their own investigations, or invite the interested parties to make their cases and decide on the basis of the information so gathered? I call the former the inquisitorial procedure in arbitration and the latter the adversarial procedure. I conduct a...

In this paper, we discuss the choice for build-operate-and-transfer (BOT) concessions when governments and managers do not share the same information regarding the operation characteristics of a facility. We show that larger shadow costs of public funds and larger information asymmetries entice...

We examine screening incentives, welfare and the case for mandatory skin-in-the-game. Ex ante banks can screen, using interim private information to choose retentions and structuring. Ex post speculators trade with rational hedging investors. Absent regulation, there is a separating equilibrium...

Due to technological convergence, multiple infrastructures can now offer broadband or triple-play services, while the existing access regulation is based on a single essential network. We show that continued asymmetric access regulation of one network does not control sufficiently for market...