This paper theoretically analyzes the role of reference prices on competition and welfare in a context of a circular city model with free entry and reference prices, in which paying market prices above a reference negatively affects the utility of consumers. Agents interact in a three-stage...

Abstract: This article discusses the prosecution of excessive pricing cases regarding pharmaceutical products under EU law in its regulatory context. In recent years the legal framework for the pursuit of such cases, based on the United Brands precedent, has been established more firmly. The...

Diesel has the strongest linkages with the economy amongst all petroleum products consumed and a major contributor to inflation and fiscal deficit in India. Therefore, the diesel subsidy reforms implemented since 2012 and the diesel pricing policy implemented since 2014 by the government of...

We give a thorough analytic characterization of a large class of sticky-price models where the firm’s price setting behavior is described by a generalized hazard function. Such a function provides a tractable description of the firm’s price setting behavior and allows for a vast variety of...

The paper explores the unique approaches to IP protection in the countries belonging to the Organisation Africaine de la Propriété Intellectuelle/African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI) and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions; the limited extent to which legal and policy...

We consider a joint inventory and pricing problem with one warehouse and multiple stores, in which the retailer makes a one-time decision on the amount of inventory to be placed at the warehouse at the beginning of the selling season, followed by periodic joint replenishment and pricing...

To prevent firms from manipulating prices, U.S. regulators set price ceilings for open-market share repurchases. We find that market-structure reforms in the 1990s and 2000s dramatically increased share repurchases because they relaxed constraints on issuers seeking to compete with other traders...

Abstract This paper investigates the sensitivity of U.S. economic performance to oil price changes, accounting for changes in the domestic petroleum supply-demand balance over the last decade. A non-linear (asymmetric) autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model is used to estimate the U.S. GDP...

An imperfectly-informed regulator needs to procure multiple units of some good (e.g., green energy, market liquidity, pollution reduction, land conservation) that can be produced with heterogeneous technologies at various costs. How should she optimally procure these units? Should she run...

The paper analyses the reasons for Japan's persistently low inflation since the bursting of the Japanese bubble economy (low inflation conundrum). It is shown that Japan experienced a structural break from a high-growth period with relatively high inflation to a low-growth period with...

Over the past several years, the federal government has consulted widely in formulating new rules for the regulation of brand-name drug prices through the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB) and a long-delayed set of rules that are expected to result in large price reductions, now...

We consider a model where for-profit providers compete in quality in a price-regulated market that has been opened to competition, and where the incumbent is located at the center of the market, facing high costs of relocation. The model is relevant in markets such as public health care,...

According to economists of the Austrian school, even with everyone’s best efforts, a system based on social ownership of the means of production could not effectively deploy a decentralized price system. The case is made primarily by Mises and Hayek in the 1920s and 1930s with a further...

Price discrimination has raised numerous public concerns and many regulatory agencies have enacted fairness regulations on prices to curb such controversial practices. In this work, we find that, relative to non-regulation, appropriate regulation may alleviate the cut-throat price competition...

War necessitates both allocating real resources to defense and certain interest groups being in favor of the government raising resources to wage war. Price controls can be a tool for governments to mobilize additional resources while buying the support of certain key interest groups, hence...

The roam-like-at-home regulation (RLAH) eliminated all mobile roaming surcharges to Eu-ropean consumers travelling within the European Economic Area (EEA). We measure the causal impact of the regulation on EEA roaming traffic, using the Rest of the World as a control group. We find large and...

This paper reviews the leading ideas that have emerged within two paradigms of price adjustment. Neither, it appears, provides a satisfactory theoretical scheme when taken in isolation. This paper concludes that an attempt to merge the more convincing elements of each is needed, and some...

One of the most important variables in the study of the North Korean economy is market prices and foreign exchange rates. This is because of the assumption that the two variables immediately reflect the status and trends of the North Korean economy. In fact, many North Korean economic studies...

Efforts to strengthen the global patent system for pharmaceuticals continue to be controversial, and what will likely be a similarly fraught international debate over price controls has begun. The outcome of international negotiations and the resulting policy decisions made by each country will...

We empirically assess the impact of the EU roaming regulation on mobile operators’ average revenues per user (ARPU) and retail prices. Using a differences-in-difference approach, hedonic price regressions and detailed operator and plan-level data we find that the regulation decreased mobile...

New IEA paper argued that reforms are needed to encourage more choice and more trading in Britain’s water market.Tackling water shortages and ensuring water costs are kept low for consumers requires changes in how water is regulated. A new report, Water: Supply, Prices, Scarcity and...

We analyze consequences of changing the terms of trade between agriculture and industry on capital accumulation and on welfare of workers in different sectors. The issue was central to Soviet industrialization debate and it remains important in today's developing world. Through a simple general...

This paper provides a detailed discussion of the real phenomena that materialized in the stabilization period which followed the German hyper-inflation. Significant real dislocations arose after the monetary reform; and these can be attributed to a government policy which subsidized heavy...

The regulation of telecommunications, railroads, and other network industries has been based on mandatory unbundling and facilities sharing - entrants have the option to lease part or all of incumbents' facilities if and when they desire, at rates determined by regulators. This flexibility is of...

This paper studies regulatory policy interventions aimed at protecting sticky consumers who are exposed to exploitation. We model heterogeneous consumer switching costs alongside asymmetric market shares. This setting encompasses many markets in which established firms are challenged by new...

Environmental pollution, climate warming and other issues have become global issues, and the use of renewable energy as the best way to solve the problem has gradually attracted the attention of all countries. Uncertainty has an important effect on the production of renewable energy. Through a...

The paper explores the unique approaches to IP protection in the countries belonging to the Organisation Africaine de la Propriété Intellectuelle/African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI) and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions; the limited extent to which legal and policy...

We empirically assess the impact of the EU roaming regulation on mobile operators' average revenues per user (ARPU) and retail prices. Using a differences-in-difference approach, hedonic price regressions and detailed operator and plan-level data we find that the regulation decreased mobile...

The roam-like-at-home regulation (RLAH) eliminated all mobile roaming surcharges to Eu-ropean consumers travelling within the European Economic Area (EEA). We measure the causal impact of the regulation on EEA roaming traffic, using the Rest of the World as a control group. We find large and...

The History of Economic Thought as a field has long taken it as a premise that so far as ancient economic thought is concerned, only the Greeks and Romans are worth studying. This paper introduces the Guanzi as a core text in ancient Chinese economic thought on price stabilization from a...

Fuel prices are commonly perceived to be excessively high, which regularly triggers political discussions about fuel price regulations. Consumers demand stricter fuel price regulations to provide transparency about the current price level and to protect them from sudden price fluctuations. Such...

Competition law may play an important role in drug pricing control by containing high prices derived from economic violations. Since the use of competition tools is not limited by the TRIPS Agreement or other international binding disciplines, there is ample policy room to explore how countries,...

We study the impact of regulation on competition between brand-names and generics and pharmaceutical expenditures using a unique policy experiment in Norway, where reference pricing (RP) replaced price cap regulation in 2003 for a sub-sample of off-patent products. First, we construct a vertical...

Competition authorities and regulatory agencies sometimes impose pricing restrictions on firms with substantial market power - the dominant firms. We analyze the welfare effects of a ban on behaviour-based price discrimination in a two-period setting where the market displays a competitive and a...

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the factors that can cause price levels to diverge and which are at the root of different inflation rates in Europe including the EU-27. Among others, we study the structural and cyclical factors influencing market and non-market-based service, house...

A non-trivial fraction of people cannot afford to buy pharmaceutical products at unregulated market prices. This paper analyses the public insurance of a patent-protected pharmaceutical product in terms of price controls and socially optimal third-degree price discrimination. First, the paper...

Economic theory states that “free market” competition naturally achieves lower prices—thereby increasing efficiency and benefiting society. This is the first paper in the literature to use means testing to statistically analyze electricity prices, from 1970-2011, for states that...