Entry of new firms can be difficult or even impossible at capacity constrained facilities, despite the actual cost of entering is low. Using a game theoretic model of incumbent firms’ pricing behaviour under these conditions, it is found that under the assumption of Bertrand competition and...

This paper provides a briefing for developing countries to apprise them of the main issues which are relevant for development and social welfare in relation to the present and prospective discussions on competition policy in the WTO, UNCTAD, OECD and other fora. Although this is the immediate...

European competition policy has been one of the common policies since the beginning of European integration. The European level economic policy coordination and the customs union have required a uniform framework for competition policy covering the whole Community. Nowadays the economic...

This paper discusses complementarities and tensions between competition policies and consumer protection policies. The paper argues that markets will often supply adequate customer protection without the need for extra public intervention. Special areas where intervention might be needed are...

Competition authorities carry out investigations and impose legal penalties on firms which are caught infringing the competition law. The rationale of this policy is to prevent firms from distorting free competition in a way that is detrimental to economic efficiency and at the same time to...

Beginning in December 2004 Google has pursued a new project to create a book search engine (Google Book Search). The project has released a storm of controversy around the globe. While the supporters of Google Book Search conceive the project as a first reasonable step towards unlimited access...

Commissioned by the European Commission, the Final Report for the EU-Canada Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) on the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) provides a comprehensive assessment of the potential impacts of trade liberalisation under CETA. The analysis...

In this paper we empirically analyse two counterfactual situations facing an anti-trust authority following the merger of two of the largest international cigarette companies. First we estimate a nested logit model of demand for cigarettes. The implied elasticity of demand for smoking and...

The aim of this paper is to describe in detail a set of newly developed indicators of the quality of competition policy, Competition Policy Indexes, or CPIs. The CPIs measure the deterrence properties of a competition policy in a jurisdiction, where for competition policy we mean the antitrust...

This paper provides a comprehensive discussion of the deterrence properties of a competition policy regime. On the basis of the economic theory of law enforcement we identify several factors that are likely to affect its degree of deterrence: 1) sanctions and damages; 2) financial and human...