Critical infrastructures such as energy, communications, banking, transportation, public government services, information technology etc., are more vital to industrialized economies and now than ever before. At the same time, these infrastructures are becoming increasingly dependent on each...

This paper analyses the economic and legal aspects related to practices such as tying, bundling and other potentially unfair commercial practices widely used in the financial services industry. Authors draw special attention to the European financial services market. Their law and economics...

The public policy approach to the Internet has become more and more complex as several markets – including fixed and mobile communications, media and content, IT – converge into one single Internet ecosystem. As in all ecosystems, zones and domains depend on each other, and there is no...

This Working Document examines the quality of impact assessments in the European Commission and the UK between 2005 and 2010. The findings suggest that impact assessment is not merely a perfunctory activity in the European Union and the UK. Quality has improved steadily over the years, arguably...

Notwithstanding the undeniable success of telecoms liberalisation in terms of price reduction, new services and technologies as well as consumer satisfaction, EU telecoms policy is at least a half failure. This might seem hard to believe, but we show in this policy briefing that there is no such...

The emergence of cloud computing is promising enormous benefits for small businesses, due to the dramatic reduction in IT costs caused by the service-oriented architecture. At the same time, the transition to a cloud ecosystem is more controversial for individual end users, as emerging business...

This paper examines the content of impact assessments (IAs) in the European Commission (EC) and the UK for the period 2005 to 2010. We coded 477 IAs for the UK and 296 for the EC, using a detailed scorecard. The findings suggest that IA is not a perfunctory activity in the European Union and the...

The essential facility doctrine lies at the core of telecoms regulation since its very first steps in the United States and in the European Union. Later, the doctrine spread around the world and currently stands as a key pillar of the liberalization efforts underway in several countries....

This comprehensive volume provides a state-of-the-art overview of regulatory economics and reviews the main theories, tools, and domains of regulation