The European Union's Energy Efficiency Directive calls for EU Member States to put in place ambitious energy efficiency policies and requires them to establish energy saving targets. One of the most important Articles of the Directive is Article 7, which required Member States to implement...

The article develops R. H. Coase’s insight that the level of transaction costs in the market determines the amount of externalities, thus providing arguments against government intervention. Contrary to Coase, however, we argue that the level of transaction costs cannot be considered as given,...

The concept of a barrier to entry has been discussed least since Bain (1956) with important contributions by Spence (1977), Dixit (1980) or Milgrom and Roberts (1982). The more recent discussion is synthesized in the contributions to a dedicated session at the 2004 AEA meeting. Yet, a “barrier...