One of the arguments against the Fair Trade scheme is that the guaranteed minimum price tends to depress world prices and thus the incomes of non-participating farmers (e.g. The Economist, 2006). We develop a model that distinguishes between the impact of the introduction of a Fair Trade market...

In this paper, I investigate the effect of the takeover of a Slovak petroleum firm on its price setting mechanism. In particular, I tested the changes in the reaction of output (fuel) price on input (dollar and crude oil) prices and competitors' prices (approximated by the reference Commodity...

The empirical transition literature on the comparison of restructuring prior to privatization is quite limited. Macedonia is a specific case among transition economies where a large number of break-ups occurred at the beginning of privatization. Using firm-level data, we estimate the effects of...

We study the economic impacts of the interaction between a regulator's Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection policy against software piracy on the one side and the forms of IPR protection that software producers may themselves undertake to protect their intellectual property on the other...

The standard price competition of two or more players leads to Bertrand equilibrium in basic economic theory (if complete information is assumed, there are no capacity constraints, etc.). In reality, even on highly competitive Internet-based markets, the prices of seemingly undifferentiated...

Two software developers, each offering a product variety of different (exogenously given) quality, compete in prices for heterogeneous users who choose from purchasing a legal version, using an illegal copy, and not using a product at all. Using an illegal version violates intellectual property...

We study how the strength of public intellectual property rights (IPR) protection against software piracy (copyright protection) affects private IPR protection (that software developers may themselves undertake to protect their IPR). There are two software developers that offer a product variety...

Motivated by the failure of competition to emerge after the natural gas market in the Czech Republic was liberalized, I explore the impact of natural gas storage ownership and upstream competition on the downstream level. I extend standard Cournot models to understand current and likely future...

This paper proposes that globalization, through the enlargement of the market, can influence both specialization and the equilibrium firm size. By re-introducing two factors of production into the muchutilized Dixit-Stiglitz-Ethier framework, I show that gains from specialization depend only on...

Promoting competition among electricity producers is crucial for ensuring allocative efficiency and lower electricity prices. In this paper, I empirically examine the electricity market of England and Wales in order to analyze to what extent the regulatory reforms were successful in promoting...