I study the passthrough of regulated ad valorem pharmacy markups and reduced Value Added Tax (VAT) rates to pharmaceutical retail prices in Finland. My reduced form evidence shows that pharmaceutical manufacturers respond to a decrease in regulated pharmacy markups by increasing their wholesale...

We test the predictions of the sticky information model using a survey dataset by comparing shoppers' accuracy in recalling the prices of regulated and comparable unregulated products. Because regulated product prices are capped, they are sold more than comparable unregulated products, while...

Der generelle X-Faktor ist neben dem Effizienzvergleich ein wesentliches Element im Kontext einer Anreizregulierung, die Wettbewerb simulieren will. Der generelle X-Faktor übernimmt dabei die Funktion, dass Netzbetreiber wie Unternehmen im Wettbewerb durch technischen Fortschritt bedingte...

Italian environmental laws set targets for separate waste collection (SWC) in a top-down public decision-making approach. This study uses quarterly data (2002Q1-2019Q1) on the 103 Italian provinces to investigate whether the targets activate a yardstick competition (YC) mechanism in SWC....

This paper studies the pricing incentives of a monopolist constrained by a revenue cap endogenously determined by her costs in a so-called base year. Such regulation is employed, among others, to govern electricity distribution operators in Germany. We show that the revenue cap may incentivize...

In 2022, energy prices in the European Union reached record highs, accompanied by a significant increase in fuel prices. In response, the Hungarian government imposed a price cap on retail fuel prices from November 15, 2021 to December 6, 2022. This study empirically examines the effect of the...

A capped volatility swap is a forward contract on an asset’s capped, annualized, realized volatility, over a predetermined period of time. This paper presents data-driven machine learning techniques for pricing such capped volatility swaps, using unique data sets comprising both the strike...

A lack of transparency about policy performance can pose a major obstacle to welfare-enhancing policy competition across jurisdictions. In parallel surveys with German citizens and state parliamentarians, we document that both groups misperceive the performance of their state's education system....

Fuel price caps are one of the potential regulatory tools for controlling wholesale electricity prices when fuel prices are volatile. In this paper, we introduce a theoretical model to study the effects of such caps on firms’ bidding behavior and clearing prices in spot market auctions. We...

A price cap on Russian crude oil, at 60 USD/barrel, was implemented in December 2022. Using parsimonious modeling and detailed Russian oil-field data, this paper studies the price cap’s impact on the Russian economy, global winners and losers and how a cap at different levels affects these...

A lack of transparency about policy performance can pose a major obstacle to welfareenhancing policy competition across jurisdictions. In parallel surveys with German citizens and state parliamentarians, we document that both groups misperceive the performance of their state's education system....

This paper presents an approach for resilience incentives in the regulation of electricity network operators. Resilience is the ability of the power system to deal quickly and efficiently with large-scale and long-lasting power interruptions. It comprises two related aspects: minimizing the...

This paper studies tax policy interaction among local governments for both mobile and immobile tax bases. We exploit exogenous changes in the local tax setting of German municipalities due to participation in state debt reduction programs to learn about the size, scope and nature of strategic...

A lack of transparency about policy performance can pose a major obstacle to welfare-enhancing policy competition across jurisdictions. In parallel surveys with German citizens and state parliamentarians, we document that both groups misperceive the performance of their state's education system....

Die wirtschaftliche Replizierbarkeit von Endkundenprodukten marktbeherrschender Unternehmen ist eine der Voraussetzungen für eine flexiblere Entgeltregulierung von Breitbandvorleistungen. Diese wird anhand des Economic Replicability Test (ERT) überprüft. Im Rahmen des ERT prüft die nationale...

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the introduction, in October 2018, of maximum thresholds ("caps") on debit card interchange fees for domestic payment cards in Brazil. We investigate the behavior of card issuers' revenues from debit and credit card interchange fees, the merchant...

This paper by David Robinson, Angel Arcos, Michael Tennican and Fernando Núnez offers an independent assessment of certain key economic effects of the Iberian Exception (IE), the common name for legal measures affecting the Iberian power market that were introduced in June 2022 by the Spanish...

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, many countries have pledged to end or restrict their oil and gas imports to curtail Moscow's revenues and hinder its war effort. Thus, the European ministers agreed to trigger a cap on the gas price. To detect the importance of the price cap for gas, we...

This paper compares import tariffs and import price caps as policy measures to regulate a foreign monopolist. We show that for any positive import tariff there exists a set of price caps each of which Pareto-dominates the given tariff. This result is particularly important in the case of...

A lack of transparency about policy performance can pose a major obstacle to welfare-enhancing policy competition across jurisdictions. In parallel surveys with German citizens and state parliamentarians, we document that both groups misperceive the performance of their state’s education...

In this paper we empirically address the issue of whether reductions in card payment interchange fees have a significant impact on prices paid by consumers. The answer to this question is at the core of most competition policy cases and regulations that have been applied to card payment markets....

The regulatory and operating context of energy networks is dynamic and constantly evolving. Achieving a multitude of economic, environmental, social and policy objectives is a challenging task for the sector regulators. In 2010, the UK energy regulator Ofgem replaced its approach to energy...

"With twenty-two chapters written by leading international experts, this volume represents the most detailed and comprehensive Handbook on electricity regulation ever published. The volume covers the existing state of best-practice regulation in the US, UK, the European Union and Australia, for...

We analyze the Baron and Myerson (1982) model of regulation under the restriction that transfers are infeasible. Extending techniques from the delegation literature to incorporate an ex post participation constraint, we report sufficient conditions under which optimal regulation takes the form...

We study the impact of government-led incentive systems by examining a staggered reform in the Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) performance evaluation policy. To improve capital allocative efficiency, in 2010, regulators switched from using return on equity (ROE) to economic value added...

Successful innovation is essential for the survival and growth of organizations but how best to incentivize innovation is poorly understood. We compare how two common incentive schemes affect innovative performance in a field experiment run in partnership with a large life sciences company. We...

High and increasing hospital prices have led to calls for price regulation. If prices are high because of consolidation, regulating prices could enhance welfare. However, high prices could also reflect increased willingness to pay by privately insured consumers for clinical and non-clinical...