Common wisdom about the effects of gas market liberalization in the EU claims that the fragmentation of gas supply in the downstream market can raise the price of gas imports, as the bargaining power of European firms in the upstream market would be weakened. We consider such a claim from the...

Given a compact connected component of zeros of a vector field, we give a necessary condition for its asymptotic stability in terms of its index and Euler characteristic.

Given a game and a dynamics on the space of strategies it is possible to associate to any component of Nash equilibria, an integer, this is the index, see Ritzberger (1994). This number gives useful information on the equilibrium set and in particular on its stability properties under the given...

We extend Kohlberg and Mertens' (1986) structure theorem concerning the Nash equilibrium correspondence to show that its graph is not only homeomorphic to the underlying space of games but that it is also unknotted. This is then shown to have some basic consequences for dynamics whose rest...

In this paper we extend the model of vertical product differentiation to also consider information disparities about the extent of quality differences. Equilibrium prices turn out to depend not only on the share of informed consumers but also on uninformed consumers beliefs about quality...

We analyze rehabilitation investments in a regulated water industry with perfectly inelastic demand. We compare alternative organizational solutions for local provision (municipalization, corporatization and privatization), though subject to a common regulatory mechanism. We can then assess the...

Scarce storage capacity and distortions in access to storage can lead to market foreclosure in liberalized gas markets. We consider rules currently adopted in Europe for storage allocation, and discuss efficient rationing mechanisms as based on the value of storage, when other flexibility inputs...

We survey the theoretical literature on privatization and efficiency by tracing its evolution from the applications of agency theory to recent contributions in the field of political economy. The former extend the theory of regulation with incomplete information to address privatization issues,...

Voluntary agreements with industry offer many examplesof overcompliance with respect to environmentalstandards. Such phenomena seem to be irrational butappear less surprising considering firms' strategiesare aimed to internalise environmental quality. Wemodel the choice of the environmental...