We consider the regulation of a monopolistic market when the prin- cipal delegates to a regulatory agency two tasks: the supervision of the firm's unknown costs and the arrangement of a pricing mechanism. As usual, the agency may have an incentive to hide information from the principal to share...

Within a standard three-tier regulatory model, a benevolent prin- cipal delegates to a regulatory agency two tasks: the supervision of the …rms (two-type) costs and the arrangement of a pricing mecha- nism. The agency may have an incentive to manipulate information to the principal to share the...

We investigate the terms of exchange between the legislative branch of the government and an administrative bureau with standard operating procedures. An administrative bureau is a not-for-profit public organisation responsible for the production of a non-marketable good. Such a bureau is...

This document analyses collusion by innovative firms and the role of patents in a continuous-time real options framework. A patent-investment race model is formulated in which innovative firms bargain and reach collusive agreements. It is shown that, while collusion always delays innovation, it...

This paper studies the design of law-making and law enforcement institutions based on the premise that law is inherently incomplete. Under incomplete law, law enforcement by courts may suffer from deterrence failure, defined as the socialwelfare loss that results from the regime's inability to...

This paper addresses the issue of anticompetitive and collusive practices in a continuous-time real option framework. We extend the symmetrical duopoly under uncertainty model by Dixit and Pindyck (1994), by granting a patent to the first innovator that files an application. The...

Centralisation at the level of the European Union takes the form, not so much of increased staff or budget, but of enlarged responsibilities and an increased share in regulation. The paper first reviews possible explanations of that trend that are based on a view of bureaucracy inspired by, or...

This paper analyzes the influence of the shadow economy on corruption and vice versa. We hypothesize that corruption and shadow economy are substitutes in high income countries while they are complements in low income countries. The hypotheses are tested for a crosssection of 120 countries and a...

We analyze the optimal technology policy to solve a free-riding problem between the members of a RJV. We assume that when intervening the Government suffers an additional adverse selection problem because it is not able to distinguish the value of the potential innovation. Although subsidies and...

This paper studies an incompletely informed regulator's problem of inducing a firm producing durable pollution to adopt a socially optimal pollution storage technology. We construct a sparse, yet flexible, theoretical model that can be applied directly to concrete situations as it is stated...