Competition Policy: What are the Costs and Benefits of Measuring its Costs and Benefits?

Summary  Competition authorities are increasingly measuring the effects of their enforcement actions, seeking a robust justification for the proliferation of competition policy. We highlight the importance of identifying the right counterfactual against which to measure effects, and set out the relevant categories of costs and benefits. We then explore how a balance can be struck between the benefits and inherent limitations of these measurement exercises. Relatively crude analyses of cartel action benefits can be sufficient to achieve public legitimacy for competition policy. Assessing the effects of merger and conduct inquiries is often ambiguous, but could be used to improve decision-making processes. Director and Managing Consultant, respectively, at Oxera, Oxford and London. The valuable comments of Fod Barnes, Kerry Hughes and an anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors alone.     

浅论我国农产品流通企业扩张的基本规律与政策规制

通过对农产品流通企业扩张形式全面的理论梳理, 研究总结了二种类型的农产品流通企业扩张基本规律,即纵向扩张和横向扩张,并对中国农产品企业扩张问题进行了实证研究,最后对我国农产品流通企业扩张提出建议.     

Political Measures for Strategic Environmental Policy with External Effects

This paper investigates an environmental policy designed to reduce the emission of pollutants under uncertainty, with the agent problem as an optimal stopping problem. We first analyze the two cases in which there are one agent and two competing agents by following Ohyama and Tsujimura (2005). When we consider a model of strategic agents, we need to analyze the external economic effect that is peculiar to an agent’s environmental policy implementation. Then, to improve and resolve these external effects, we examine three alternative political measures, comprising an environmental subsidy, an environmental tax and an emission trading system. The results of the analysis indicate that the environmental subsidy and environmental tax promote environmental policy. However, they do not create an incentive to be the leader. On the other hand, an emissions trading system not only promotes environmental policy but also creates an incentive for leadership.This paper was previously circulated under the title “Political Measures for Strategic Environmental Policy with Induced Effects”. The authors would like to thank Masaaki Kijima for helpful comments. The authors would also like to thank Alistair Munro and two anonymous referees providing detailed comments and suggestions. This research was partially supported by Daiwa Securities Group Inc. The second-named author was partially supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (2), 16310118.     

Competition and Information Production in Market Maker Models

Abstract:   The microstructure literature models the mechanisms through which fundamental information is incorporated into market prices. This paper extends previous models by endogenising information production and analysing incentives for costly information production. In contrast to the existing literature, increasing the number of informed traders can result in reduced price informativeness. When prices have an allocative role this has welfare consequences: the regulatory implications of a dichotomy between private and public incentives for information gathering are discussed.     

营销角度的特许经营及其竞争法上的思考

特许经营是一种新型的销售方式,作为企业分销系统的构成要素,能够起到降低风险,沟通生产与消费的作用。然而在实际经营过程中也会出现许多诸如指定购买与搭售、联合定价、独占经营等违反竞争法的问题。为适应不断变化的竞争形势,应从竞争法的层面上对其加以规制。     

基于更新理论的产品保修策略模型

产品价格的确定不仅取决于生产成本 ,还应包涵服务成本。非价格竞争下 ,产品保修是售后服务的主要内容。本文运用更新报酬理论 ,建立了产品保修策略模型。模型表明 :在消费转型时代 ,只有引入产品的差异性、降低生产成本、提高产品质量、延长产品寿命、制订合适的保修策略 ,才能保障合理的厂商利润 ,有效刺激需求。     

Bank Monitoring and Environmental Risk

Abstract:  Loan announcement effects for 152 Canadian companies are examined to investigate the efficiency of monitoring by banks facing lender environmental liability. Market reaction to the announcement of bank debt to 'environmental' firms is more positive and significant than for 'non-environmental' firms and, for firms in industries with a higher likelihood of experiencing spill events, is more positive and significant, reinforcing earlier results that establish a relationship between specific loan/borrower characteristics and announcement period excess returns and providing further evidence on the 'uniqueness' of bank loans by demonstrating the superior ability of banks to monitor corporate borrowers exposed to environmental liability.     

An Important Field： Environmental Accounting

With the environmental crisis, the government has issued many regulations, and the importance of environmental accounting also become more and more attached. This paper will focus on the standards and information of environmental accounting.     

Measuring the Impact of Regulation: A Study of Canadian Basic Cable Television

We evaluate the appropriateness of regulation within the Canadian cable television industry by applying both parametric and non-parametric approachesto measure scale efficiency. Although we begin with a sample offering adequatedegrees of freedom for parametric estimation, important policy issues lead us toconsider further estimation over sub-samples. Since some of these sub-samplesare small enough that parametric models cannot guarantee reliable estimates, weobtain production characteristics non-parametrically through data envelopmentanalysis. The nonparametric results for scale efficiency support the parametricresults. We find evidence against a natural monopoly argument that might havejustified continuation of the mandated monopolization of Canadian cable televisionservice. By the end of the sample period, there were no longer substantial economiesof scale in most relevant markets.     

The Market's Assessment of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999

We examine the impact of the events leading up to and including the passage of the Financial Services Modernization Act (FSMA) of 1999 on the stock returns of banks, brokerage firms, and insurance companies. We find that the impact is positive for all institutions. Bank gains are positively related to size and capitalization. Brokerage firms gain regardless of size, but the gains are inversely related to capitalization and insurance companies gain regardless of size or capital position. The strong positive reaction suggests that the market expects the institutions to benefit from the new opportunities created by the FSMA's passage.