Many voluntary agreements (VA's) fall under the European or Dutch cartel prohibition (Article 81 EC, Article 6 Mededingingswet). This paper starts with an abstract description of the relation between competition and environmental protection. Particular attention is paid to the role in this...

The US government has decidedly moved towards encouraging co-operation in research and development (R&D) between firms, universities, and other research institutes since the early 1980s. The Republican Administration in the early 1980s set the stage for a radical shift in market environment...

This paper explores the various policies implemented in Italy to foster innovative activities and to regulate the technological effects on market competition and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Research promotion has primarily taken the form of facilitated credits and grants to stimulate R&D...

The purpose of this paper is to represent in which way a stable and no negligible growth in demand can affect the level of sustainability of collusion. For the European Commission this assumption is seen as a factor that disincentives collusion and pushes to a competitive behavior. This fact...

Ultra-hazardous risky activities as the nuclear industry cannot be considered as normal industries i.e. without abnormal environmental and health risks. This theoretical paper studies the industrial organization of electro nuclear sectors from the view point of the general cost of impact...

I find that current US's and EU's Antitrust laws -- in particular their "moderate"' leniency programmes that only reduce or at best cancel sanctions for price-fixing firms that self-report -- may make collusion enforceable even in one-shot competitive interactions, like Bertrand oligopolies and...

Using data on Government of Canada securities auctions, this paper shows that in countries where direct access to primary issuance is restricted to government securities dealers, Order-flow" information is a key source of private information for these security dealers. Order-flow information is...

This paper provides a systematic study of the market for accountants in Italy during the period 1980-91. Firstly, it develops a comparison in the determinants of incomes of the two competing professions (Commercialisti and Ragionieri) focusing on entry as one of the main variables of interest to...

The paper deals with the regulation of professions in Italy. It is a very traditional system of regulation based on inputs control. This regulation is clearly excessive for most of the professions. In fact, market failures - both in terms of information asymmetries and externalities - do not...

The paper takes the viewpoint of the neoinstitutional theory of the firm to analyse Germany's voluntary Dual Management System for Packaging Waste Collection and Recycling (DSD); namely, its governance structure and its contractual relations with upstream and downstream firms. Two aspects...