The 1998 Competition Act represents a major change in the content and practice of competition policy in the United Kingdom, bringing it into line with European policy as practised under Articles 85 and 86. The paper presents an economic evaluation of the new provisions, and of the draft...

We reexamine the mechanism of yardstick competition when the regulator does not observe firms' cost characteristics, which can depend on exogenous variables and idiosyncratic shocks.

This paper studies the competition policy for the year 2000. Two contentions are made in this paper. First, all market economies have a competition policy (CP) even if they do not have competition legislation because of the influence that other policies have on the competitive process. Second,...

Trade barriers are failing and U.S. producers are competing in increasingly open international markets. Further, data reveal considerable heterogeneity across industries in the intertemporal path of import-penetration. Against this backdrop, we focus on an issue that is increasingly important...

Competition and market power have been the focus of much of the empirical research conducted by the EIM in the recent past. This report is concerned with these issues as well, and focuses in particular on the link between market conduct and performance. The background of the model which is...

This report discusses allocative efficiency and focuses on pricing and quantity-setting policies. These can be considered to be the most fundamental aspects of market power. Perfect competition is commonly advocated as optimal. If the price in a certain industry diverges from marginal cost, this...

This paper studies the competition policy for the year 2000. Two contentions are made in this paper. First, all market economies have a competition policy (CP) even if they do not have competition legislation because of the influence that other policies have on the competitive process. Second,...

We consider a homogenous good oligopoly with identical consumers who learn about prices either by (sequentially) visiting firms or by consulting a price agency who sells information about which firm charges the lowest price.

The purpose of this paper is to test the nature of competition concerning price and capacity setting in the Norwegian airline industry after the deregulation in 1994. Did the two airlines, SAS and Braathens, compete on prices and capacities (competition), collude on prices and capacities...