The question of whether exclusive licensing of the right to provide harbour towage services in ports can provide a superior outcome to open competition has been among the questions that have recently preoccupied Australian policymakers. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the arguments for...

Requiring developing countries to adopt competition laws has become a standard element in Free Trade Agreements between those countries and developed countries, and in the check list of measures sought by the World Bank and other multilateral institutions. However, there is little reason to...

We argue five main propositions. Firstly, the choice between royalties and profit-based taxation involves an efficiency trade-off, between diminished incentives to produce output on one hand, and diminished incentives to minimize costs on the other (as in Laffont and Tirole 1993). So the Brown...

Third party access regimes impose on an incumbent an obligation to provide third parties with access to designated services and facilities at regulated terms and conditions. This article examines the manner in which the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) has set the terms and...

We argue five main propositions. Firstly, the choice between royalties and profit-based taxation involves an efficiency trade-off, between diminished incentives to produce output on one hand, and diminished incentives to minimize costs on the other (as in Laffont and Tirole 1993). So the Brown...

This paper presents an analytical framework for examining changes in the Private Health Insurance rebate (PHIR) and the Medicare Levy Surcharge (MLS), and uses it to establish three key propositions. First, increases in the MLS rate tend to reduce the elasticity of demand for private health...

The Australian Treasury contracted KPMG Econtech (2010) to estimate the efficiency cost of Australian taxes, using the MM900 Computable General Equilibrium model. The resultant report, endorsed by Treasury, was a major input into the Henry report into Australia's Future Tax System (AFTS) and...