François Lévêque - Böcker

An attempt at a detailed analysis of all main aspects characterising the design and implementation of voluntary approaches in environmental policy, this book contains both theoretical analyses and case studies. The chapters of this book therefore provide a useful assessment of the main features and of the potential implementation problems of a new, important and promising environmental policy instrument.

Lévêque recounts twenty revealing tales of real-life rivalry between firms across diverse industries, including wine, skiing, opera, video games and cruise liners. These entertaining and insightful narratives are informed by recent advances in economics, factoring in the many forces driving competition, including globalization and innovation. Divided into four sections, the book covers competition and the market; competition and variety; competition through innovation; and competition and equality. Read together, these stories also serve as building blocks to address the issue of whether competition between firms has entered a new era of increased intensity. This book will appeal to anyone, from company executives to consumers, who are interested in the economics of contemporary industry and want to incorporate a grasp of competition into their everyday decision-making. This book can also be used as a supplementary text in courses in microeconomics, business economics and industrial organisation.

This text provides a methodological and practical transmission tariff guide for those who are involved in the electricity business as managers, engineers, lawyers, economists, regulators or policy-makers, but who are not specialists in electricity transport, nor in tariff-setting for public utilities. It offers a synthesis of economic research on the subject. The volume is divided into three major parts, each presenting a general aspect of transmission pricing: its legal and accounting background, its basic theory, and its implementation, successively. How much does it cost to transmit electricity from a nuclear plant close to Lyon in France, to a car manufacturer located in Stuttgart in Germany? What price should a system operator in Canada charge a pulp and paper mill that uses the high-voltage grid for only a few weeks per year? Where in California is it more profitable to reinforce or build a new transmission line? What is the best place to locate a power gas station in England, in order to pay the lowest transmission cost? Such questions are novel and crucial for American and European liberalized electricity markets.

Transport Pricing of Electricity Networks aims at providing a methodological and practical transmission tariff guide, to those who are involved in the electricity business as managers, engineers, lawyers, economists, regulators or policy-makers, but are not specialists in electricity transport, nor in tariff-setting for public utilities. It offers a synthesis of the recent economic research on the subject. The volume is divided into three major parts, each presenting a general aspect of transmission pricing: its legal and accounting background, its basic theory, and its implementation, successively. How much does it cost to transmit electricity from a nuclear plant close to Lyon in France, to a car manufacturer located in Stuttgart in Germany? What price should a system operator in Canada charge a pulp and paper mill that uses the high-voltage grid for only a few weeks per year? Where in California is it more profitable to reinforce or build a new transmission line? What is the best place to locate a power gas station in England, in order to pay the lowest transmission cost? Such questions are novel and crucial for American and European liberalised electricity markets.Transport Pricing of Electricity Networks shows how the economics toolbox can be used to answer them.

This impressive volume presents a detailed comparative analysis of merger remedies in the EU and US, motivated by the fact that a growing number of mergers are being scrutinised and reviewed under both jurisdictions. Merger remedies on either side of the Atlantic play an increasingly important role in the implementation of public policy with regard to the economic concentration of industry. The book provides an understanding of merger remedies in general, and of procedural and substantive differences in the approach of the EU and the US. The editors have gathered together leading European and American practitioners and scholars to comprehensively discuss this issue. They aim to help policymakers decide if, and how, current practices can be improved, and to help firms and their counsel better prepare cases and predict outcomes. This volume sets forth an agenda for future research by providing a critical overview of merger remedies and their implementation in the EU and US. It will become the requisite study in the field for scholars of industrial organisation, law and economics, and for legal practitioners and policymakers working in the realm of competition law.

In modern markets innovation is at least as great a concern as price competition. The book discusses how antitrust policy and patent and copyright laws interact to create market dynamics that affect both competition and innovation. Antitrust and intellectual property policies for the most part are complementary, sharing common goals of promoting innovation and economic welfare. In some cases, however, their distinct approaches, one based on competition and the other on exclusion, come into conflict. As antitrust authorities focus increasingly on ensuring that firms do not interfere with innovation by rivals or impede the pace of technological progress in an industry, they necessarily must confront difficult questions about the strength and scope of intellectual property rights. When should private property rights give way to public competition objectives? When is it appropriate to remedy anticompetitive outcomes through access to protected intellectual property? How does antitrust enforcement or competition itself affect incentives to innovate? Leading economists and lawyers address these questions from both US and EU perspectives in discussing salient antitrust cases involving intellectual property rights such as Microsoft, Magill, Kodak, IMS and Intel.Offering a non-technical introduction to this major topic, this book will be of interest to those practitioners and legal and economic scholars who may only be aware of one side of the conflicting views on competition law and intellectual property law. It will also be of interest more generally to schools and universities of law in the EU and the US.

This book responds to the opening up of electricity markets to competition, which has completely changed the nature of power generation. The building of new generation and transmission capacity and the setting of the energy mix between nuclear, gas and renewable resources are mainly left to private initiative and investors.The authors and the editor of this book explore whether or not market forces offer a sustainable future for electricity generation. They employ economic theory and method to answer questions such as: Will the market be able to ensure adequacy of generation capacity and security of supply? Can price signals from future electricity markets lead to an acceptable level of investment for society? How can market and public intervention combine to deliver the right signal to invest in expanding and reinforcing the grid? How can two complementary investments such as the building of power plants and the expansion of the network be coordinated successfully?With a focus on the EU and US liberalised electricity markets, these questions, and others, are answered by leading thinkers in the field, and offer a much-needed assessment of the long-term consequences of liberalisation.

The diverse and excellent set of authors assembled in this book sheds light on the continuing and conflicting calls for deregulation and re-regulation of important industries and informs the ongoing, increasingly global, policy debate over the evolving line between regulation and general competition policy. The purpose of this book is to understand the debate and its policy implications, focusing on the traditionally regulated sectors of telecommunications and energy, and comparing approaches in the European Union and the United States. The book also contains contributions that generalize across industries, thus lending relevance beyond the two sectors that anchor the book.Innovatively combining legal and economic views, Antitrust and Regulation in the EU and US will be of great interest to scholars of competition law, international law firms, and competition authorities and sector-specific regulation authorities (federal and state).

The realisation of a European internal market for energy is still a work in progress. Written by leading European scholars and discussed with major energy stakeholders, this book presents a thorough analysis of the motives and methods needed to achieve a single European energy market. The authors discuss the critical issues surrounding an internal European energy market including: market design, competition and market power, sustainable energy versus the market, regulation and harmonisation, benchmarking and indicators, modelling of competition, market prices and energy forecasts. They provide a multi-disciplinary assessment of the 'best way' to build the market base of a future European energy policy. Electricity Reform in Europe will be of great interest to decision makers and managers in the energy industry or business sector as they will be able to see the whole European energy policy 'picture' beyond their own corporate interests. The book will also appeal to national and European energy administrations, regulatory bodies and policy makers providing a synthesis of all relevant policy issues.

In economic, technical and political terms, the security of energy supply is of the utmost importance for Europe. Alongside competition and sustainability, supply security represents a cornerstone of the EU's energy policy, and in times of rising geopolitical conflict plays an increasingly important role in its external relation. Within this context, the contributors analyse and explore the natural gas, nuclear, and hydrogen energy sectors, which will be of critical significance for the future of energy supplies in EuropeThe book opens with an extensive exploration of the very definition of `supply security' and moves beyond sector-specific debates to highlight the political sensitivity surrounding energy security. The expert contributors apply a policy perspective, underpinned by theoretical discussion, to economic analysis in order to yield policy-relevant conclusions. They illustrate that the EU lacks a coherent transnational energy policy, that national energy policies fail to match EU goals and that, ultimately, sustainable energy policies, more competition, and better regulation will improve global welfareAcademics and EU policymakers- both at national and international levels-will find that the topical policy recommendations, extensive overview of supply security, and detailed perspectives on the natural gas, nuclear and hydrogen sectors presented herewith constitute an invaluable reference and recearch tool

Environmental Policy in Europe focuses on the creation of environmental policy, how new legislation is formed and the influence brought to bear by industrial interest groups. By addressing the nature of this consultation process between interested parties and public authorities, the authors show why public policy in the European Union is so different in practice from the prescriptions of academic scholarship. European environmental legislation results from a process of consultation and negotiation which is extensively explored in this volume by a distinguished group of authors. Focusing on such issues as pesticide registration, combustion emissions, the European waste management industry, recycling regulations and eco-auditing, they offer unique insights into the development of public policy. While the analysis focuses on the actual behaviour of firms and public authorities, the authors also discuss the involvement of firms within the regulation devising process - to determine whether their behaviour distorts the public interest - and the strategic use by firms of the regulatory process by firms leading to restrictions of competition.Scholars, students and policymakers will welcome Environmental Policy in Europe for seeking to enlarge the traditional perspective of environmental economics on public policy while integrating the recent advances of both the economics of regulation and industrial economics.