A firm engaged in activities which are environmentally risky has private informationboth on her choice of safety care and on the level of her assets. Public authorities havea stake in implementing a high level of prevention effort and in unveiling the true levelof assets for liability payments....

Based on the modern theory of regulation, the analysis aims to characterize the effective economic regulation of the French railway industry. The methodology consists in econometrically testing various scenarios of regulation and determining which of these best fits the data. Using aggregate...

Based on the modern theory of regulation, the analysis aims to characterize the effective economic regulation of the French railway industry. The methodology consists in econometrically testing various scenarios of regulation and determining which of these best fits the data. Using aggregate...

This paper investigates various options for the organization of the railway industry when network operators require the access to multiple national networks to provide international (freight or passenger) transport services. The EU rail system provides a framework for our analysis....

Regulators often do not regulate all firms competing in a given sector. Due to product substitutability, unregulated competitors have incentives to bribe regulated firms to have them overstate their costs and produce less, thereby softening competition. The best collusion-proof contract entails...

We develop a model of vertical merger waves leading to input foreclosure. When all upstream firms become vertically integrated, the input price can increase substantially above marginal cost despite Bertrand competition in the input market. Input foreclosure is easiest to sustain when upstream...

When a firm undertakes activities which are risky for the environment, the conflict between social and private incentives to exercise safety care requires imposing fines in case a damage occurs. Introducing asymmetric information on the firm's wealth, we show that the fines and probabilities of...

We analyze early contracting when a seller has private information on the future gains from trade and the buyer can bypass. Despite ex-post trade occurring under complete information and being efficient, early negotiation with an informed seller allows the uninformed buyer to improve her...

When a firm undertakes risky activities, the conflict between social and private incentives to exercise safety care requires public intervention. This control takes the form of both monetary incentives but also monitoring taking place either ex ante or ex post, i.e. before or after an accident...

We analyze early contracting when a seller has private information on the future gains from trade and the buyer can bypass. Despite ex-post trade occurring under complete information and being efficient, early negotiation with an informed seller allows the uninformed buyer to improve her...