A vertically integrated firm that wholesales to its retail rivals can, if it has sufficient market power, set the margin between its retail and wholesale prices so as to harm its rivals. Conventionally, an imputation test is used to determine whether such behavior is being undertaken. Such tests...

The Australian Competition Tribunal plays a central role in the Australian regulatory system. Three of the Tribunal’s recent decisions are examined and found to have significant errors. It is argued on the basis of the economics of the institutional design that these errors are inevitable in a...

Third party access regimes impose on an incumbent an obligation to provide third parties with access to designated services and facilities at regulated terms and conditions. This article examines the manner in which the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) has set the terms and...

Recent models which claim to provide examples of profitable foreclosure--when a firm weakens competition by reducing its access to customers or inputs--have led to calls for more aggressive antitrust activity by courts and regulators. However, we show that the alleged anticompetitive behavior of...

Do technology policies matter? Yes, but their effect overwhelmingly depends on the environment in which they operate. Particularly important is whether this environment promotes the broad diffusions of new ideas and the rapid adoptions of new technologies. If it does, policies aimed at...

The following is a transcription of my discussion of the papers (published in this issue) that were presented in the Panel on Competition Policy in Card-Based Payment Systems session of the Antitrust Activity in Card-Based Payment Systems: Causes and Consequences conference.

The Australian Treasury contracted KPMG Econtech (2010) to estimate the efficiency cost of Australian taxes, using the MM900 Computable General Equilibrium model. The resultant report, endorsed by Treasury, was a major input into the Henry report into AustraliaÂ’s Future Tax System (AFTS) and...