This paper is a comment on Ronald Gilson and Alan Schwarz “Constraints on Private Benefits of Control: Ex Ante Control Mechanisms versus Ex Post Transaction Review”. Together with that paper it will appear in the Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 169 (1) in 2013, in a...

Drawing from the economics of two-sided markets, we provide suggestions for the definition of the relevant market in cases involving two-sided platforms, such as media outlets, online intermediaries, payment cards companies and auction houses. We also discuss when a one-sided approach may be...

This paper, based on my concluding remarks at the Colloquium on the Economic Aspects of Gambling Regulation: EU and US Perspectives held at Tilburg in November 2006, discusses the question why, in Europe, some service sectors (such as network industries) are liberalised, while others (like the...

We study the optimal design of liability schemes (at the corporate or individual level) when the objective is to deter socially harmful corporate behavior without discouraging productivity enhancements. We assume that firms face agency problems between shareholders and managers (moral hazard)...

This paper contains the conclusions from the work of the Economic Impact Group (EIG), a part of the CoPECL Network of Excellence funded by the EU to prepare a Draft Common Frame of Reference (DCFR). Part 1 revisits basic principles which are central to the work of the whole group. For one,...

Article 82 of the EC Treaty states that any abuse of a dominant position is prohibited, and mentions four examples of abuses: (i) directly or indirectly imposing unfair prices or other unfair trading conditions; (ii) limiting production or development to the prejudice of consumers; (iii) unequal...

This paper describes the privatisation and deregulation programs in the Netherlands during the period 1982-2002, that is, under the governments headed by Lubbers (1982-1994) and Kok (1994-2002). The paper explains that the Dutch define privatisation as "making use of private interests and market...

We discuss the benefits and limitations of modern merger simulation analysis from an academic perspective. The first part of our exposition focuses on game-theoretical issues and provides insights from experimental economics. In the second component we explore choices to be made in the empirical...

We review the burgeoning literature on two-sided markets focusing on the different definitions that have been proposed. In particular, we show that the well-known definition given by Evans is a particular case of the more general definition proposed by Rochet and Tirole. We then identify the...