Do some countries innovate more than others? If so, why? And once the reasons behind these differences in performances are set out, what policy options do they imply? This paper explores these questions including 'inventiveness' in the broad definition of 'innovation' to provide a basis for...

Part IIIA of the Trade Practices Act provides a mechanism by which third party access can be mandated to facilities such as rail links. This paper examines what it is that Part IIIA might be doing from an economic perspective, and what that tells us about when mandated third party access might...

The Merger Guidelines released in March 2008 by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) provide a guide to the analytical approach the ACCC intends to adopt to assessing mergers for the purposes of s.50 of the Trade Practices Act. The new Guidelines do a relatively good job in...

This article considers the significance of market definition for the regulation of telecommunications markets in Australian competition law. The legislative context for defining telecommunications markets is discussed. The economic principles which arise when defining telecommunications markets...

Time consistency refers to situations where a policy that is optimal ex ante proves not to be optimal ex post, creating the risk of opportunistic policy reversals. While the threat of such reversals has received widespread attention in the theoretical literature, testing whether policy is indeed...

Termination charges toward newer entrants are often set asymmetrically to exceed efficient costs for telephony traffic. Such practices are said to be beneficial to consumers as well as providing competition a quot;leg-upquot;. However claims of consumer benefit are dubious at best, while infant...

This paper examines the difficulties inherent in regulation as a solution to market failure and, especially, to natural monopoly. It highlights the way regulation itself introduces new risks into the supply of natural monopoly services, including the risk of regulatory opportunism, and argues...