The British broadcasting system is heavily influenced by public service broadcasting (PSB) concepts and regulation. The debate over PSB has raged for decades and has to varying degrees been based on the proposition that there are myriad market failures in the provision of broadcast television...

This paper questions whether markets need contain products that are direct substitutes for consumers. It shows that there are many instances where markets consist of products that are not direct substitutes, and those which consumers cannot directly use or are at different functional levels in...

This paper sets out the basic economics of network effects and two-sided or multi-sided markets as relevant to antitrust and regulation. Network effects, and the related concept of two- (or multi-) sided markets, are playing an increasing role in antitrust/competition law in the communications...

This article examines the relationship between the environment, sustainability, and European competition law. It shows that the European Commission’s decisional practice not to exempt anticompetitive agreements under Article 101(3) TFEU is because it selectively prosecutes hardcore cartels....

In the past, the use of a compulsory levy on television sets (a licence fee) to finance the BBC could be justified given the problem of spectrum scarcity and the fact that television signals were a public good (i.e. there was effectively a zero marginal cost of an additional user receiving the...

This chapter sets out the principles and emerging practice governing cartel damages in the EU and UK. It identifies the types of damages available; the issue surrounding causation, pass-on, volume effects, and mitigation; and the methods that have been be used to estimate overcharges, volume...

R. H. Coase (1910–2013), a leading modern figure in the classical liberal tradition, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1991 for his analysis of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the functioning of the economy.Before Coase’s work in the 1930s, there was...

This paper undertakes a critical review of the prospect that self-learning pricing algorithms will lead to widespread collusion independently of the intervention and participation of humans. There is no concrete evidence, no example yet, and no antitrust case that self-learning pricing...

The effects of the increase in the employers’ liability on work accidents is under-researched. Here the impact using time series analysis of changes brought about by the Employers’ Liability Act 1880 and Workmens’ Compensation Act 1897 on the UK coal mining fatality rates and wages over...