Regulatory reform of the UK gas market: The sase of the storage auction

The UK gas industry has undergone major changes since it was privatised in 1986 as a fully integrated monopoly. The most significant of these has occurred not as a result of the privatisation legislation but by the intervention of the ordinary competition authorities in support of an active industry regulator. While price capping continues to be used as the primary instrument for welfare protection against the still substantial monopolistic powers of the incumbent, new competition (which has been positively encouraged) has had the greater impact on prices and choice. Recently, however, the regulator has encouraged the use of auctions for the sale of storage capacity. This paper considers the merits of auctions and makes a tentative evaluation of their effectiveness. Further use of auctions is recommended but reserve prices are considered inappropriate where monopoly power still remains.     

跨国公司中的内部贸易问题探讨

随着跨国公司不断发展,其内部化贸易作用日显重要。本文从内部化贸易的理论依据开始,着重分析了内部化贸易在跨国公司资本运作中的作用以及其相应的负面影响,为我国在处理有关跨国公司内部化问题时提供了参考依据。     

Scarcity and appropriative competition

This paper formalizes the commonsensical hypothesis that resource scarcity causes a large allocation of time and effort to appropriative competition. Our main innovation is to model explicitly the positive intertemporal effect of consumption on the probability of survival. The critical assumption is that this effect becomes stronger as resources become scarcer. We also show that anticipated future resource abundance increases the incremental value of survival and, consequently, amplifies the current allocation of time and effort to appropriative competition. Interestingly, if resources are currently scarce, then larger anticipated future abundance can cause a big enough increase in the time and effort allocated to appropriative competition to result in a decrease in the sum of current and expected future utility, a “paradox of anticipated abundance”.     

The causes and consequences of sector‐level job flows in Poland*

We look at the determinants and consequences of job reallocation in the 22 2‐digit sectors of the manufacturing industry in Poland over the period 1995–99. We find that import competition and a competitive market structure (weak concentration) have a positive and significant effect on job reallocation. Moreover, higher job reallocation is associated with higher labour productivity growth in some specifications. This confirms implications from neo‐Schumpeterian growth models: one channel through which competition might positively affect growth is through the reallocation of scarce resources from declining firms to rising ones. JEL Classifications: F16, J24, J6, O3, P3.     

How Far Can Chinese Motorcycles Roar？——A Study on Motorcycle Export of China

Export of Chinese motorcycles increased dramatically in the past few years. This growth, however, is encountered with many fatal problems, such as over-intensified export market, low value-added, overwhelming fake commodities, awkward technology innovation and intellectual property rights protection, bitter competition from foreign counterparts, and anti-dumping charges by foreign countries, etc. This paper sheds light on these problems and challenges and puts forward suggestion accordingly.     

Endogenous Growth and Negative Externalities

Received March 5, 2001; revised version received August 5, 2002 Published online: April 30, 2003     

Network neutrality and the nature of competition between network operators

The neutral architecture of the Internet is being challenged by various parties, such as network operators providing the connections to end-users, who are interested in gaining control of the information exchanged over the Internet. What are the effects on competition and welfare of such practices? Currently, there exists very little economic theory on network neutrality. This paper provides a preliminary analysis of the type of economic modeling that can address network neutrality, as well as of the type of results that can be expected.     

Cap and trade policies in the presence of monopoly and distortionary taxation

We extend an analytical general equilibrium model of environmental policy with pre-existing labor tax distortions to include pre-existing monopoly power as well. We show that the existence of monopoly power has two offsetting effects on welfare. First, the environmental policy reduces monopoly profits, and the negative effect on income increases labor supply in a way that partially offsets the pre-existing labor supply distortion. Second, environmental policy raises prices, so interaction with the pre-existing monopoly distortion further exacerbates the labor supply distortion. This second effect is larger, for reasonable parameter values, so the existence of monopoly reduces the welfare gain (or increases the loss) from environmental restrictions.     

产业集群竞争力分析

当前,产业集群现象遍布全国各地,是推动区域经济的一股重要力量,分析各产业集群竞争力,已经成为人们争相考虑的一个问题.本文作者认为,产业集群竞争力是产业集群综合实力的反映,应该从产业集群的经济社会形势、集中度指数以及可持续发展情况等方面来分析.     

经济发展的税收效应定量分析

采取面板数据模型分析了经济发展的税收效应,发现经济发展的不同层面对税收的影响不同,表明政府在进行税收改革时要充分考虑经济发展的反作用。结果显示,生活水平提高总体上会降低税率、流转税比重和其他税比重以及提高所得税比重,实际经济增长率增加会提高税率和其他税比重、降低流转税比重和所得税比重,城乡收入差距扩大会降低税率、所得税比重和其他税比重以及提高流转税比重。