This paper provides a systematic study of the market for accountants in Italy during the period 1980-91. Firstly, it develops a comparison in the determinants of incomes of the two competing professions (Commercialisti and Ragionieri) focusing on entry as one of the main variables of interest to...

The paper deals with the regulation of professions in Italy. It is a very traditional system of regulation based on inputs control. This regulation is clearly excessive for most of the professions. In fact, market failures - both in terms of information asymmetries and externalities - do not...

The paper takes the viewpoint of the neoinstitutional theory of the firm to analyse Germany's voluntary Dual Management System for Packaging Waste Collection and Recycling (DSD); namely, its governance structure and its contractual relations with upstream and downstream firms. Two aspects...

Many voluntary agreements (VA's) fall under the European or Dutch cartel prohibition (Article 81 EC, Article 6 Mededingingswet). This paper starts with an abstract description of the relation between competition and environmental protection. Particular attention is paid to the role in this...

This paper empirically evaluates the price effects of the merger of two major book retail chains in the UK: Waterstone's and Ottakar's. We employ differences-in-differences techniques and use a rich dataset containing monthly scanner data information on a sample of 200 books sold in 60 stores in...

The fight against cartels is a priority for antitrust authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. What differs between the EU and the US is not the basic toolkit for achieving deterrence, but to whom it is targeted. In the EU, pecuniary sanctions against the firm are the only instruments...

We study the effect of a merger in a dynamic high-technology industry–the videogame market– which is characterized by frequent introduction of new products. To assess the impact of the merger between two large specialist retailers in the UK, we perform a difference-in-differences analysis...

Regulation and competition policy are two alternative modalities by which the state intervenes in the market. In order for either to deliver welfare gains, there must first be a pre-existing market failure. We first present different varieties of market failures and identify those for which...

Competition is a basic mechanism of the market economy involving supply and demand. The legislative framework of the European competition policy is provided by the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU)(Articles 101–109). Without an effective EU competition policy, the Single...

A common reform used to increase consumer choice and competition in public services has been to allow private providers to compete with public incumbents. However, there remains a concern that not all consumers are able to benefit equally from wider choice. We consider the case of publicly...