In some markets vertically integrated firms sell directly to final customers but also to independent downstream firms with whom they then compete on the downstream market. It is often argued that resellers intensify competition and benefit consumers, in particular when wholesale prices are...

Private operation of port facilities is becoming increasingly common worldwide. We investigate the effect of port privatization in a setting with two ports located in different countries, each serving their home market but also competing for the transshipment traffic from a third region. Each...

Liberalization of network industries frequently separates the network from the other parts of the industry. This is important in particular for the electricity industry where private firms invest into generation facilities, while network investments usually are controlled by regulators. We...

The decision to provide services of general interest by public or private enterprises has to be based on the following key issue: should one refer to these services as public goods? This question cannot be answered generally but has to be addressed on a case-tocase basis. Although there are some...

Competition between parallel infrastructures incorporates opposing welfare effects. The gain from reduced deadweight loss might be outweighed by the inefficient duplication of an existing infrastructure. Using data from broadband Internet access for western Europe 2000-04, this paper...

We study an industry in which an upstream monopolist supplies an essential input at a regulated price to several downstream firms. Legal unbundling means in our model that a downstream firm owns the upstream firm, but this upstream firm is legally independent and maximizes its own upstream...

The economic analysis of trade-secret protection has traditionally focused on the interests of companies to conceal information from competitors in order to gain a competitive advantage through trade-secret law. This has neglected cases in which the interest is not in concealing information from...