This paper analyses rental contracts in the housing market assu-ming asymmetric information about tenant related `service cost' andimperfect mobility. On the positive side it explains why long standingtenants tend to enjoy lower rents |the so called `tenure discount'. Onthe normative side, it...

...The first section takes a brief look at the history of rent controls. Initially mostmeasures were aimed at preventing landlords from reaping what was perceived tobe a ‘windfall profit’ resulting from some sort of unexpected emergency. It alsodemonstrates the diversity of rent control...

Restricted access to finance is often stated as one of the main obstaclesto the development of the SME sector in Russia. In this paper, wepropose a new lending strategy that allows private banks to profitablyincrease financing of this sector in spite of being at a disadvantagecompared to the...

Russian natural gas is delivered to Western Europe by pipelines, running throughUkraine, Poland and other transit countries. We derive the bargaining power of thedifferent players along this supply chain endogenously from the architecture of thetransmission system and its possible extensions by...

We analyze how a firm might protect quasirents in an environment of imperfect capital markets, where switching lenders is costly to the borrower, and contracts are incomplete. As switching costs make the firm vulnerable to ex post exploitation, it may want to diversify lending. Multiple-source...

Existing cooperative game theoretic studies of bargaining power in gas pipeline systems are based on the so called characteristic function form (CFF). This approach is potentially misleading if some pipelines fall under regulated third party access (TPA). TPA, which is by now the norm in the EU,...

We study the impact of the liberalization of EU natural gas markets on the balance of power between `local champions', customers, and outside producers. We distinguish between two steps of the reform: 1. opening access to transit pipes and 2. opening access to distribution systems, hence...

We use the Shapley value and the nucleolus to analyze the impact of three controversial pipeline projects on the power structure in the Eurasian trade of natural gas. Two pipelines, `Nord Stream' and `South Stream', allow Russian gas to bypass transit countries, Ukraine and Belarus. The third...