This paper discusses new digital methods for delivering online music - streaming and downloading - and overviews the new subscription services that will make music available to online customers. Starting with Music Net and Pressplay, the services will be seen to differ in a number of key...

1 Introduction -- 2 A Non-Bayesian Incentive Mechanism Using Two-Part Tariffs -- 3 Regulating by Capping Prices -- 4 Information, Incentives, and Commitment in Regulatory Mechanisms: Regulatory Innovation in Telecommunications -- 5 Productivity and Price Caps in Telecommunications -- 6 Constant...

Electric utilities throughout the world continue to face new challenges involving ownership, market structure, and regulation. There are three related issues at hand. First, should ownership be private or public? Second, what operations should be integrated and where is competition feasible?...

Economists have long recognized that the cost of using an appliance or machine should incorporate both the associated energy cost and a user cost for the depreciation of capital that results. One must be careful in measuring the latter. Depending on whether the appliance or machine depreciates...

Energy economists have long recognized the fact that changes in energy prices can affect the demand for energy in several ways (e.g., see Fisher and Kaysen, 1962; Taylor, 1975). In the short run, energy users can change their utilization of a fixed appliance stock or a fixed set of capital...

A new era may be emerging for the strategists and decision makers who are responsible for reliably and economically supplying electricity to America's homes and businesses. In the last decade, fuel shortages, price hikes, record-high interest rates, and a new environmentalist awareness have led...

This article considers a duopoly in which each firm produces two components of a system. If the components are compatible, consumers may "mix and match" the firms' components. The system components and consumer tastes are assumed to differ with regard to vertical characteristics. In the model,...

Several of the authors question the efficacy of copyright, which is increasingly regarded as benefiting multinational organisations rather than individual authors and performers. Others are less critical of copyright per se, but question its ability to meet the new challenges of a digital era....

A Handbook of Cultural Economics includes over 60 eminently readable and concise articles by 50 expert contributors. This unique Handbook is both highly informative and readable; it covers a wide area of cultural economics and its closely related subjects. While being accessible to any reader...