Regulating seaports is difficult in general, even more so for the weak regulatory institutions common in developing countries. For this reason some countries have awarded these facilities via Demsetz auctions, to the port operator that bids the lowest cargo-handling fee. A major concern with...

We argue that in adjudicating SEP royalty rates, courts should do what they do in pricing other assets or the flows of income they produce: rely on information from the market about the value of comparable assets or their rental rates. The comparables method is based on price theory, which...

Roadway privatization offers many benefits, from decreasing transportation's dependence on public coffers to using market forces to decrease the number of "white elephant" roadway projects. But, in the United States, only two private road projects have been undertaken during the last century, in...

This paper analyses the foundations of efficient-firm regulation (implemented in Chile for almost two decades), and the formulas that are used to set the prices of water/sanitation companies, electric power distributors and the dominant phone companies. We show that efficient-firm regulation...

Over the last 15 years the cellular SEP market has achieved a long-run equilibrium spanning the development, deployment and use of 2G, 3G, 4G, and now 5G technologies. Cumulative royalties have converged to market values, and the market has apportioned them according to the incremental value...

We study how the sequence of financing of R&D varies according to the ease with which property rights over knowledge can be defined. There are two financiers: a venture capitalist (VC) and a corporation. The knowledge acquired in costly research becomes embodied in the researcher's human...

This paper quantifies the direct impact of taxes on income distribution at the household level in Chile and estimates the distributional effect of several changes in the tax structure. We find that income distributions before and after taxes are very similar (Gini coefficients of 0.448 and...

In recent years several countries have started massive highway franchising programs auctioned to private firms. In these auctions, the regulator typically sets the franchise term and firms bid on tolls, or, alternatively, the regulator sets tolls and the winner is the firm that asks for the...

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) cannot be justified because they free public funds. When PPPs are justified on efficiency grounds, the contract that optimally balances demand risk, user-fee distortions and the opportunity cost of public funds, features a minimum revenue guarantee and a...