Motivated by policy events experienced during the last two decades by the European natural gas industry, this paper develops a simple model for analyzing the interaction between gas release and capacity investment programs as tools to improve the performance of imperfectly competitive markets....

Regulators often do not regulate all firms competing in a given sector. Due to product substitutability, unregulated competitors have incentives to bribe regulated firms to have them overstate their costs and produce less, thereby softening competition. The best collusion-proof contract entails...

The key role of institutions for economic performance has recently been acknowledged in the economic policy debate. This paper aims at pointing out the main policy lessons and the recommendations to be drawn from New Institutional Economics (NIE), when considering the organization of markets. We...

Twenty-one papers explore the accomplishments, limitations, and unmet needs of the field of new institutional economics. Papers discuss the theories of the firm; contracts--from bilateral sets of incentives to the multilevel governance of relations; institutions and the institutional...

Network industries are now characterized by a regime of permanent innovation, while they continue to be fixed and sunk cost industries, due to the high level of investments in R&D and infrastructures. Players in these industries need to coordinate their investments; hence a threat of collusion....

The purpose of this study is to use real options theory to answer the following question: Is it necessary, in France, to invest in new nuclear power units or should some of the existing units be decommissioned? The theoretical model developed establishes two price thresholds which determine...

This paper presents a theoretical model of remanufacturing where a duopoly of original manufacturers produces a component of a final good. The specific component that needs to be replaced during the lifetime of the final good creates a secondary market where independent remanufacturers enter the...

Entrants may provide information to a regulator, even when they cannot be regulated. With correlated costs, yardstick-like regulatory contracts based on the output of unregulated firms nullify information rents. But they give strong incentives to the regulated incumbent to bribe competitors. A...