This paper considers merger control in a common agency framework where firms and their competitors can influence the antitrust agency and where transparency while making lobbying less effective also implies real resource costs. We examine the performance of two alternative standards that can be...

The industrial restructuring in the new Länder of Germany consisted of closing down production capacities created under the socialist regime. In turn, public and private investments were channeled into those departments of the former "factories of the people" (VEBs) where new production...

In this paper we specify and estimate a structural model which links product market competition and union power. The model has a two-stage setting in which wages are determined through bargaining between management and unions in the first stage, with a price-setting market game to follow in the...

This paper develops a framework for testing discrete complementarities in innovation policy using European data on obstacles to innovation. We propose a discrete test of supermodularity in innovation policy leading to a number of inequality constraints. We apply our test to two types of...

In this paper, we analyze the scope for conflict between national merger control agencies which assert jurisdictions simultaneously. We consider a positive model of merger control in which market definition and the analysis of dominance are both explicitly specified. We find that conflict in...

This paper proposes a simultaneous-equation approach to the estimation of the contribution of transport infrastructure accumulation to regional growth. We model explicitly the political-economy process driving infrastructure investments; in doing so, we eliminate a potential source of bias in...

In this paper we investigate how telecommunications infrastructure affects economic growth. This issue is important and has received considerable attention in the popular press concerning the creation of the "information superhighway" and its potential impacts on the economy. We use evidence...

This paper provides a structural interpretation to the estimates of the shape and position of nonlinear tariffs. We focus on the evaluation of price-cost margins, and thus we need to identify marginal cost from an equilibrium model of nonlinear pricing competition. We estimate these price-cost...

The purpose of this discussion paper is to contribute to the analysis of two questions. Should a merger control system take into account efficiency gains from horizontal mergers, and balance these gains against the anti-competitive effects of mergers? If so, how should a system be designed to...

This paper argues that the study of policy incidence in industrial organization needs to take the endogeneity of government into account. The point is made by investigating whether political considerations are important in terms of understanding the causes and effects of deregulation using data...