This paper analyses how the competition authorities in the Czech republic, Poland and Hungary (CPH) have dealt with the interface between trade and competition in their actual practice. The following findings emerge (i) there has not been any significant conflict in the allocation of...

By limiting the scope for substitution between commodities, other things equal quantity constraints raise the cost of living. Thus, rationed families have higher povery lines than unconstrained ones. This heterogeneity in both resources and poverty lines means that, in principle, bivariate...

This paper studies the evolution of hurricane insurance in Florida over the last decades. Hurricanes (and other natural catastrophes) are typically referred to as "uninsurable" risks. The more exposed property owners find it difficult to obtain insurance cover from the private market and/or can...

Lancasterian models of product differentiation typically assume a one-dimension characteristics space. We show that standard results on prices and locations no longer hold when firms compete in a multi- characteistics space.

In a previous paper we have shown that the UBS-SBC merger would lead to an excessive concentration in the credit market for small and medium companies. The UBS has reacted to this paper in a series of letters to the Swiss competition authorities. We critically examine the content of these...

Le droit suisse du logement ne fait pas la différence entre les taux d'intérêt nominaux et les taux d'intérêt réels. Il en résulte une forte sur-indexation des loyers en périodes de taux d'inflation élevés. En raison de cette lacune conceptuelle de la loi sur la protection des...

This paper does not seek to evaluate whether decentralisation of the implementation of Art.81 ECT is desirable but simply analyses how the network of enforcers envisaged in the White Paper would operate. We identify two issues. We observe that in the proposed framework, simultaneous enforcement...

Many recent papers have pointed to ambiguous trade effects of developing regional trade agreements, calling for a reassessment of their economic merits. We focus on six such agreements currently in force in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America, estimating their impacts on trade flows and...

In this paper, public investment provision takes place in a stochastic environnement. The role of the government is to remove a part of the uncertainty faced by the firm. If the government simply maximizes the value of the firm, then the optimal tax is smaller under imperfect competition than it...