This paper examines competition in a liberalized market, with reference to some key features of the natural gas industry. Each firm has a low (zero) marginal cost core capacity, due to long term contracts with take or pay obligations, and additional capacity at higher marginal costs. The market...

In this paper we review the recent liberalization process in energy markets promoted by the European Commission in the late Nineties and implemented in all the member countries. The electricity and gas industries are characterized by a predominant role of network infrastructures, and by upstream...

In this paper we review some recent work on public intervention in economic environments where ?firms undertake investments in research or in physical assets, and then choose appropriate business practices to extract pro?ts from the outcomes of the investment process. Public policies may take...

We analyze optimal policy design when firms' research activity may lead to socially harmful innovations. Public intervention, affecting the expected pro?tability of innovation, may both thwart the incentives to undertake research (average deterrence) and guide the use to which innovation is put...

We analyze the effect of judicial errors on the innovative activity of firms. If successful, the innovative effort allows to take new actions that may be ex-post welfare enhancing (legal) or decreasing (illegal). Deterrence in this setting works by affecting the incentives to invest in...

This paper analyses the sources of buyer power and its effect on sellers' investment. We show that a retailer extracts a larger surplus from the negotiation with an upstream manufacturer the more it is essential to the creation of total surplus. In turn, this depends on the rivalry between...

We model an enforcement problem where firms can take a known and lawful action or seek a profitable innovation that may enhance or reduce welfare. The legislator sets fines calibrated to the harmfulness of unlawful actions. The range of fines defines norm flexibility. Expected sanctions guide...

We study the enforcement of competition policy against collusion under Leniency Programs, which give reduced fines to firms revealing information to the Antitrust Authority. Such programs give firms an incentive to break collusion, but may also have a pro-collusive effect, since they decrease...

We analyze the relation between the intensity of electoral competition and the dissipation of political rents. In a model with perfectly informed and heterogeneous voters, two candidates commit to electoral platforms under a majority voting and winner-takes-all rule. If the proposed tax revenues...

When a firing litigation is taken to court, only the characteristics of the employee's misconduct should be relevant for the judge's decision. Using data from an Italian bank this paper shows that, instead, local labor market conditions influence the court's decision: the same misconduct episode...