Television is the dominant entertainment medium for hundreds of millions. This chapter surveys the economic forces that determine the production and consumption of this content. It presents recent trends in television and online video markets, both in the US and internationally, and describes...

Empirical research on the role of economic institutions for subjective well-being is still widely lacking, while recent economic-experimental outcomes suggest that experienced utility may depend on the intensity of market competition. This paper is the first to empirically analyze the...

This paper revisits the old discussion of the applicability of structure-conduct-performance models to the banking industry. In contrast to earlier (single) country studies, we aimed at providing an overview of how it would look like, if the model indeed would be applied over time and across a...

We study how the structure of the local banking market characterized by bank specialization and bank concentration affects credit and labor market responses to an import shock to local economies. We find that during the surge in U.S. imports from China from 1998 to 2006, small business loans...

Two and a half decades of clean energy policymaking focused primarily on environmental and economic sustainability have yielded considerable environmental and economic benefits. Along the way, however, other policy considerations, such as the social sustainability of the transition to a cleaner,...

The very concept of 'domestic regulation' in telecommunications comes from multilateral commitments of international trade in services, under WTO GATS. As international trade is a domain of multilateral and intergovernmental diplomatic relations, where regulation in telecom services, directly...

This paper, a chapter in the forthcoming Research Handbook on the Economics of Corporate law, describes the leading research related to credit ratings, and assesses regulatory proposals related to ratings, including those in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. It explains how rating agencies have...

The public policy approach to the Internet has become more and more complex as several markets – including fixed and mobile communications, media and content, IT – converge into one single Internet ecosystem. As in all ecosystems, zones and domains depend on each other, and there is no...

This paper presents an analysis of the world iron and steel industry from 1950 to 1980. After presenting a technical overview describing the technological possesses in use during that period by the steel, the iron ore and the ferrous scrap industries, we describe and analyse, on economic...

The past twenty years have witnessed the emergence of internet conglomerates fueled by acquisitions. We provide a simple theoretical model to shed some light on this. Following a large literature in management (Wernerfelt, 1984) we endow firms with a set of scarce competencies which drive their...