Consider a monopolist in one market that faces competition in a second market. Bundled loyalty discounts, in which customers receive a price break on the monopoly good in exchange for making all purchases from the monopolist, have ambiguous welfare effects. To analyze such discounts as predatory...

Of the many activities of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, we have summarized some which raise interesting economic issues. We describe recent improvements in the methodology to be used in Coordinated Effects analysis of mergers. We also discuss four cases brought by the...

What price should entrants pay an incumbent monopoly for use of its assets? Courts, legislators, and regulators have at times mandated that incumbent monopolies lease assets required for the production of a retail service to entrants in efforts to increase the competitiveness of retail markets....

This paper covers the activities of the Economic Analysis Group (EAG), during 2003-2004. It describes the economic analysis undertaken by EAG in several important investigations, litigations, and administrative and appellate matters

We consider the optimal design of simple cost-sharing policies to motivate electricity distribution utilities to manage the costs of distributed energy resource (DER) projects. The optimal share of realized cost savings (s) that is awarded to the utility takes a particularly simple form in...

We analyze the optimal design of policies to motivate electricity distribution companies to adopt efficient distributed energy resources (DER) and manage associated project costs. The optimal policy often entails a bias against new DER projects and implements considerable cost sharing when DER...

We examine the role that maximum demand charges (MDCs) can play in avoiding the death spiral that some utilities may otherwise face as the distributed generation (DG) of electricity proliferates. We find that MDCs generally secure gains for consumers that do not undertake DG, and often secure...

In this paper, the choice between public and private provision of goods and services is considered. In practice, both modes of operation involve significant delegation of authority, and thus appear quite similar in some respects. The argument here is that the main difference between the two mod-...

Despite the popularity of price cap regulation in practice, the economic literature provides relatively little guidance on how to determine the X factor, which is the rate at which inflation -adjusted output prices must fall under price cap plans. We review the standard principles that inform...