This paper examines the investment and financial decisions of a sample of 92 EU regulated utilities, taking into account key institutional features of EU public utilities, such as: a) regulation by agencies with various degrees of independence; b) partial ownership of the state in the regulated...

In this paper we develop a general model of one-sided and two-sided platform businesses and apply it to a monopolist framework. We have a particular interest in how the social loss and other metrics depend on the strength of the network (direct or indirect) effect. We study how network effects...

The bloom is off the Big Tech rose. It seems nearly the entire political spectrum is angry with Amazon, Google and Facebook for one reason or another. This has led to a great deal of discussion on whether and how to regulate (or even break up) these platforms, including whether they should be...

In this paper we apply a general model of one-sided and two-sided platform businesses to a collusive framework which we model as joint profit maximization. We have a particular interest in how the social loss and other metrics depend on the strength of the network (direct or indirect) effect. We...

In this paper we apply a general model of one-sided platform businesses to a duopoly competitive framework. We have a particular interest in how the option of multi-homing affects the competitive dynamic. We find that if multi-homing is precluded, the incumbent platform is always able to...

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the theoretical and empirical literature on the regulation of natural monopolies. It covers alternative definitions of natural monopoly, public interest regulatory goals, alternative regulatory institutions, price regulation with full...

As a part of their industry or competition policies governments decide whether to allow for free market entry of firms or to regulate market access. We analyze a model where governments (ab)use these policy decisions for strategic reasons in an international setting. Multiple equilibria of this...

This paper provides an economic analysis of recent vertical and horizontal mergers in the U.S. industry for audiovisual media content, including the AT&T-Time Warner and the Disney-Fox mergers. Using a theory-driven approach, we examine economic effects of these types of mergers on market...

Regulation and competition policy are two alternative modalities by which the state intervenes in the market. In order for either to deliver welfare gains, there must first be a pre-existing market failure. We first present different varieties of market failures and identify those for which...

There has been an explosion in the past 10-15 years of bilateral and regional free trade agreements in Latin America (together "preferential free trade agreements" or PTAs). The purpose of PTAs is to increase trade, regulatory and investment liberalization. As trade liberalization requires more...