The purpose of this paper is to analyze how digitalization affects pricing and private copy protection in contents industries. Digitalization enables content providers and online retailers to implement copy protection at different stages of creation and distribution of contents. We construct a...

We provide a model that explains the following empirical observations: i) private ownership is more efficient than public ownership, ii) privatizations are associated with increases in efficiency and iii) the increase in efficiency predates the privatization. The two key mechanisms explaining...

Digitization has impacted publishing, news, and entertainment industries in recent years by lowering the cost of access. With the option to download creative works legally, however, come the possibility of doing so illegally and the issue of how to protect copyrighted works effectively. Public...

In the past, the use of a compulsory levy on television sets (a licence fee) to finance the BBC could be justified given the problem of spectrum scarcity and the fact that television signals were a public good (i.e. there was effectively a zero marginal cost of an additional user receiving the...

Hospital markets are often characterised by price regulation and the existence of different ownership types. Using a Hotelling framework, this paper analyses the effect of different objectives of the hospitals on quality, profits, and overall welfare in a price regulated duopoly with symmetric...

This paper investigates regulation by auctions of private supply of congestible infrastructures in two networks settings: 1) two serial facilities, where the consumer has to use both in order to consume; and 2) two parallel facilities that are imperfect substitutes. There are four market...

We provide a simple theoretical model to explain the mechanism whereby privatization of international airports can improve welfare. The model consists of a downstream (airline) duopoly with two inputs landings at two airports) and two types of consumers. The airline companies compete...

This paper determines the equilibrium market structure in a mixed international oligopoly, where the state assets are sold at an auction. The model suggests that low greenfield costs and low trade costs induce foreign acquisitions. The intuition is that domestic firms can then not prevent...

This paper determines the equilibrium market structure in an international oligopoly which is opened up by a privatization. Market power is shown to be an important determinant of the equilibrium market structure, when greenfield investment costs are high. When the greenfield investment costs...