Deregulation of the U.S. natural gas industry has been under way since the late 1970s. The industry was deregulated to create competitive markets in natural gas and its pipeline transportation, in the expectation that competition would guide transactions toward a more efficient outcome. The...

In 2000 the Argentine antitrust authorities conducted a study of the state of competition in the gasoline market. The study concludes with a set of policy recommendations (that is, limits to vertical integration and to the duration of contracts between oil companies and gasoline stations) which...

The author shows how, in the United Kingdom, government and industry participants have responded to challenges created by opening the natural gas industry to competition. He concludes that, as a result of cooperation between the government and industry participants, appropriate mechanisms can be...

Evidence to support or deny expectations of future scarcity or abundance of crude oil must show whether crude oil supply functions are shifting and, if so, in what direction. The authors estimate oil supply functions for 41 countries for which suitable data are available. Because of the poor...

Innovations in futures, options, and derivative instruments permit active trading, speculating and hedging - linking markets for physical petroleum products with financial markets. These derivative markets continuously value petroleum delivered today and for future dates, providing a market...

Data for recent years indicate an acceleration of Chinese industrial growth, from the annual rates of about 10 percent recorded in the quarter century before economic reform to figures approaching 15 percent in the mid- and late 1980s. Evaluating the statistics underlying these reports requires...

Countries sometimes use export controls on raw materials to encourage domestic processing. The motivation is usually to assure raw materials at low prices for domestic industries, although exports are sometimes controlled in an attempt to increase export earnings (by promoting exports of higher...

The Mexican sugar industry operates under strict government controls. The sugar parastatal, AZUCAR, and other state agencies govern virturally all aspects of pricing and, until recently, AZUCAR controlled virtually all aspects of marketing. The purpose of this study is to make transparent the...

The Agreement on Textiles and Clothing will abolish all quota restrictions in trade in textiles and clothing by the year 2005. Dismantling the quota regime represents both an opportunity (for developing countries to expand exports) and a threat (because quotas will no longer guarantee markets...

Most literature suggests that voluntary export restraints (VER) are not very harmful for the exporting country. This paper argues that this view is misconceived. Most work has focused on the welfare loss to the importing country arising from a loss of income transfer combined with a...