This paper examines the impact of regulatory intervention to cut termination rates of calls from fixed lines to mobile phones. Under quite general conditions of competition, theory suggests that lower termination charges will result in higher prices for mobile subscribers, a phenomenon known as...

A major empirical challenge in economics is to identify how regulations (such as firing costs) affect economic efficiency. Almost all countries have regulations that increase costs when firms cross a discrete size threshold. We show how these size-contingent regulations can be used to identify...

Entry regulations against big-box retailers have been introduced in many countries to protect smaller independent stores. Using a new dataset from the UK, I show that in fact these entry regulations have been associated with greater employment declines in independent stores they were meant to...

The restrictions that planning policies impose on retail development have significantly reduced the productivity of supermarkets, according to Paul Cheshire and colleagues.

During the past few decades a number of European countries lifted the regulations that restricted the opening hours of shops on Sunday. In this paper we examine the impact of Sunday trade deregulation on employment, expenditure, prices and market structure using a difference-in-difference...

Interconnection rates are a key variable in telecommunications markets. Every call that is placed must be terminated by the network of the receiving party, thus the termination end has the characteristic of an economic bottleneck and is subject to regulation in many countries. This paper...

This paper investigates how legal cannabis access affects student performance. Identification comes from an exceptional policy introduced in the city of Maastricht which discriminated legal access based on individuals' nationality. We apply a difference-in-difference approach using...

In this paper we study the causal impact of police on crime by looking at what happened to crime before and after the terror attacks that hit central London in July 2005. The attacks resulted in a large redeployment of police officers to central London boroughs as compared to outer London - in...

The heavy police presence at football matches in England has reduced hooliganism in the stadium - but at what cost in terms of both policying budgets and under-protected places elsewhere in the neighbourhood? Olivier Marie examines the multiple effects of football matches on crime.

There is conflicting evidence on the consequences of immigrant neighbourhood segregation for individual outcomes, with various studies finding positive, negative or insubstantial effects. In this paper, we document the evolution of immigrant segregation in England over the last 40 years. We show...