Network industries are now characterized by a regime of permanent innovation, while they continue to be fixed and sunk cost industries, due to the high level of investments in R&D and infrastructures. Players in these industries need to coordinate their investments; hence a threat of collusion....

This paper analyses efforts to promote innovation in the UK energy networks sector. Using a case study approach, we chart the co-evolution between technologies and institutions in electricity distribution networks since the introduction of privatization and market liberalization over twenty...

Traditionally, universal services in network industries have relied on granting the universal service provider a reserved area. Current liberalization policies promoting competitive entry may put the traditional universal service and its financing at risk. Hence, there is an increased interest...

The literature focusing on public-private partnerships agreements points out the existence of information asymmetries that may affect the performance of these contracts. Indeed the private firm operating the service generally detain better information about the costs of the service than the...

In liberalization policies for network industries market design is primarily considered and approached as a technical and economic design problem. Market design should support an efficient, fair, robust and reliable provision of commodities. Pursuing these goals, technical and economic...

This article provides an overview of academic research on how incentives can foster or hinder creative performance. We analyze 22 relevant articles published in high-impact journals over the period 1986-June 2010 and classify the incentives discussed along four important components of...

This paper studies the role of the Commission in the European Union (EU) and how it has been affected by treaty reforms. I present a game-theoretical analysis of the Commission appointment and legislative processes, and apply it to the appointment of recent Commissions and their legislative...

Increasingly, policy makers and academics are becoming convinced of the need for lifelong access to external, i.e. employer-independent, career counseling. As careers are becoming increasingly turbulent, traditional career counseling services, which mainly focused on supporting students with...

Using an oligopolistic international trade model, which consists of three countries (A, B, and C) and three goods (two differentiated oligopoly goods and the numeraire), we examine (i) the structures of the countries’ incentives to form free trade agreements (FTAs); (ii) the pairwise stability...

Port competition is an important topic in transport economics. This is due not only to the large volumes of goods involved in port throughput – a direct measure of a port’s competitive strength – but also to derived effects in terms of employment and investment. Strikingly, the existing...