We prove that a natural monopoly can set subsidy free pricing and sustainable pricing schedules in general economic environment. The setting is a multiproduct and multiple agent contestable market where demands are elastic and where rivals can enter the sub-markets composed by a set of the...

The observed two-part tariff price structure (consisting of a lump-sum price and a linear marginal price) for drinking water in Germany does not reflect the cost structure reported in the literature. Recovering marginal costs from a sample of 251 German counties, we see that there are positive...

In the last decade, the private sector has increased its role in the highways sector both through the construction and management of new assets. Private sector involvement, often justified by the need to ease public expenditure, allows a reduction in public participation for new investments. The...

This paper derives conditions under which reputation enables certifiers to resist capture. These conditions alone have strong implications for the industrial organization of certification markets: 1) Honest certification requires high prices that may even exceed the static monopoly price. 2)...

The Japanese government initiated a series of regulatory reforms in the mid-1990s. The Japanese urban gas industry consists of various sized private and non-private firms. Numerous previous studies find that deregulation leads to productivity improvements. We extend the literature by analyzing...

This paper analyzes the role of private storage in a market for a commodity (e.g. natural gas) whose supply is subject to the threat of an irreversible disruption. We focus on the medium term in which seasonality of demand and exhaustibility can be neglected. We characterize the price and...

This study analyses the role of education in economic development in the republics of the former Socialist Bloc and more specifically the impact of human capital on per capita economic growth in transition economies in the Russian Federation, and Ukraine. The factors that are associated with the...