The River Ouse forms a significant part of Humber river system, which drains about one fifth the land area of England and provides the largest fresh water source to the North Sea from UK. The river quality in the tidal river suffered from sag of dissolved oxygen (DO) during last few decades,...

Competition in public utility sectors has been encouraged in recent years throughout Europe. In this paper we try and analyse the welfare effects of these reforms in Italy, with particular attention to water and energy goods. The first step is to introduce a sensible measure of affordability of...

This paper analyzes the constitutional determinants of cost reimbursement rules. In order to design the optimal incentive schemes, a possibly partisan planner will take into account the market cost structure, the institutional design of the supervision hierarchical structure and its technology....

The iron and steel industry is one of the most carbon emitting and energy consuming sectors in Europe. At the same time this sector is of high economic importance for the European Union. Therefore, while public environmental and energy policies target this sector, there is political concern that...

This paper considers the supplier’s strategic delivery lead time in a public procurement setting as the result of the firm’s opportunistic behaviour on the optimal investment timing. In the presence of uncertainty on construction costs, we model the supplier’s option to defer the...

The literature on public goods has shown that efficient outcomes are impossible if participation constraints have to be respected. This paper addresses the question whether they should be imposed. It asks under what conditions efficiency considerations justify that individuals are forced to pay...

This article analyzes competition between two asymmetric networks, an incumbent and a new entrant. Networks compete in non-linear tariffs and may charge different prices for on-net and off-net calls. Departing from cost-based access pricing allows the incumbent to foreclose the market in a...

We study the regulation of a firm which supplies a regulated service while also operating in a competitive, unregulated sector. If the firm conducts its activities in the two markets jointly, it enjoys economies of scope whose size is the firm’s private information, unknown either to the...

We study the competition to acquire the exclusive right to operate an infrastructure service, by comparing two different specifications for the financial proposals - "lowest price to consumers" vs "highest concession fee", and two alternative contractual arrangements: a contract which imposes...

We construct a comprehensive panel data of 96 publicly traded European utilities over the period 1994-2005 in order to study the relationship between the capital structure of regulated firms, regulated prices, and investments, and examine if and how this interaction is affected by ownership...