Single-Desk Marketing: Assessing the Economic Arguments identifies the potential benefits and costs and the strengths and weakness of various arguments in favour of current single-desk arrangements. It does not attempt to quantify the costs and benefits of arrangements in any particular industry.

We use an infinitely lived agent model in which an intermediate good is provided either by a public or a private monopolist to study the effects of privatization on steady state levels of income. We allow for public sector inefficiencies(x-inefficiency) which shift down the intermediate goods...

Efficient broadband technologies such as DSL, fibre, cable modem, powerline communications, UMTS, WLAN or WiMax are powerful locational factors for an economy. Europe in particular should promote broadband communication further to tap into its growth potential. But given the prevailing ownership...

This study analyzes the interaction of agency problems in public policy and of agency problems inside the firm: it investigates the case of a large privatized firm subject to many policy constraints. The last steps of Telefonica's privatization were designed to promote a disperse ownership and...

We examine wealth effects, for banks and insurers, of bank rights to sell and underwrite annuities. The stock-price reactions to four court and regulatory decisions are consistent with expectations of bank gains at insurers' expense. Cross-sectionally, smaller, riskier insurers with higher...

This paper explores theoretically and empirically the link between Financial Liberalization (FL) and the banking crisis that often follow. We also investigate the proposition, classical in development economics, that FL should result in an increase in supply of funds to the real sector. To...

The Commission was asked to review the National Third Party Access Regime for Natural Gas Pipelines. The review sought to assess the benefits and costs of the Regime, including its effects on investment. The Commission’s preliminary findings were released for public comment in December 2003...

The LoopCo Plan, which uses market mechanisms to promote competition, is the best approach to restructuring the telecommunications market, say its proponents, who object to the requirements and to-date implementation of the Telecommunications Act of l996. The local-loop's spin-off 's consumer...