We investigate cooperative investment in a new infrastructure and how it interacts with access obligations and demand uncertainty. Co-investment only increases total coverage if service differentiation and/or cost savings from joint investment, in particular due to high uncertainty, are high....

An extensive empirical literature indicates that, even without formal intellectual property rights, innovators enjoy a variety of first-mover advantages and that `imitation' is itself a costly activity. There is also accumulating evidence that an `open' approach to knowledge production can...

We examine pollution-reducing R&D by a monopoly firm producing a dirty product. In a dynamic framework with hyperbolic discounting, we establish conditions under which the Porter hypothesis goes through, i.e. environmental regulation increases R&D, thus reducing pollution, as well as increasing...

Based on the seminal paper of Farrell (1957), researchers have developed several methods for measuring e fficiency. Nowadays, the most prominent representatives are nonparametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) and parametric stochastic frontier analysis (SFA), both introduced in the late 1970s....

Ein Jahr nach Inkrafttreten der deutschen Energierechtsnovelle sind die Konturen der zukünftigen Strommarktregulierung noch zu weiten Teilen ungeklärt. Vor diesem aktuellen wirtschaftspolitischem Hintergrund wird in diesem Papier die Frage nach einer sachgerechten Ausrichtung der...

The topic of alternative price zone configurations is frequently discussed in Central Western Europe where - so far - national borders coincide with borders of price zones. Reconfiguring these price zones is one option in order to improve congestion management, foster trading across borders of...

U.S. federal and state governments rarely regulate healthcare price levels, but do regulate price changes for pharmaceuticals, hospitals, and health insurance. Previous research showed that limiting price increases can raise launch prices and reduce both profit and social welfare, assuming...

The paper discusses the practical possibilities of achieving increased downstream processing and the policies that are commonly used for this purpose. It reviews the reasons why forward vertical integration is not always an optimal choice for extractive industry companies. It finds little...

Short-term auctions for access to entry terminals of the British gas-network appear to successfully allocate scarce resources and capture scarcity rent. Now long-term auctions are being introduced to guide future capacity expansion decisions. In our model the fraction of rights issued in the...

The "revolving door" phenomenon has become very common in most industrialised countries, and is leading to conflicts of interest as well as economic distortions. The purpose of this paper is to develop an indicator of the distortionary effects of the revolving door - The Revolving Door Indicator...