Showing 1 - 10 of 16
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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005041831
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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005041880
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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010734596
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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005041809
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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005041813
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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005041843
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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005041913
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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005030654
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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005141926
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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005141938