Next generation access networks (NGANs) are in many cases likely to be supplied by vertically integrated firms, that is, firms that both wholesale access and sell services downstream to end-users. A long standing concern of regulators is that such firms may engage in anti-competitive price...

Termination charges toward newer entrants are often set asymmetrically to exceed efficient costs for telephony traffic. Such practices are said to be beneficial to consumers as well as providing competition a quot;leg-upquot;. However claims of consumer benefit are dubious at best, while infant...

Recent models which claim to provide examples of profitable foreclosure--when a firm weakens competition by reducing its access to customers or inputs--have led to calls for more aggressive antitrust activity by courts and regulators. However, we show that the alleged anticompetitive behavior of...

The "local cap" uses minimal information to establish an optimal price for a monopolized input in a vertically integrated firm. Under it only upstream costs need be known. No demand information is required. It is comparatively welfare efficient and has a small regulatory footprint. Profits are...

The Minerals Resources Rent Tax (MRRT) is intended to tax the rents properly attributed to minerals at the time and place of their extraction, i.e. at the mouth of the mine. However, mining operations involve a degree of vertical integration that in some cases extends from mine to port. We...

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...