The Australian Treasury contracted KPMG Econtech (2010) to estimate the efficiency cost of Australian taxes, using the MM900 Computable General Equilibrium model. The resultant report, endorsed by Treasury, was a major input into the Henry report into Australia's Future Tax System (AFTS) and...

Assets with a value of over $130billion are regulated in Australia. We define regulatory risk as being regulation that increases the cost of servicing this capital and analyse the sources of this risk. We show that unbiased and symmetric errors will generally create asymmetric risk for the firm,...

The Minerals Resources Rent Tax (MRRT) is intended to tax the rents properly attributed to minerals at the time and place of their extraction, i.e. at the mouth of the mine. However, mining operations involve a degree of vertical integration that in some cases extends from mine to port. We...

Termination charges toward newer entrants are often set asymmetrically to exceed efficient costs for telephony traffic. Such practices are said to be beneficial to consumers as well as providing competition a quot;leg-upquot;. However claims of consumer benefit are dubious at best, while infant...

This paper examines the difficulties inherent in regulation as a solution to market failure and, especially, to natural monopoly. It highlights the way regulation itself introduces new risks into the supply of natural monopoly services, including the risk of regulatory opportunism, and argues...