Core References

• Concurrent Competition Powers in Sectoral Regulation: A Report by the Department of Trade and Industry and HM Treasury United Kingdom, 2006. Department of Trade and Industry

  Examines the interface between the competition authority and sector regulators in the U.K. Considers how regulators balance their concurrent competition powers against their sector-specific regulatory powers and how regulators that have concurrent competition powers use these powers.

• Competition Policy for Small Market Economies Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003, Chapters 2 and 4. Gal, Michal S.

  Examines the implications of small economy size on competition policy. Explains regulation of monopolies in a small economy context. Defines monopoly and describes approaches to regulating a pure monopoly (a monopoly that does not also compete against other firms) and to regulating a monopoly that competes with downstream rivals. Considers the viability of these downstream rivals.

• Managing the Regulatory Process: Design, Concepts, Issues, and the Latin America and Caribbean Story Washington, D.C.: The World Bank Group, 1999, Chapters 14-15. Guasch, J. Luis, and Pablo Spiller

  Examines competition policies with an emphasis on Latin America. Considers the relationship between regulation and competition policy. Further considers regulating market structure, competition law and its enforcement, and the role of the judiciary. Examines cases of Chile and Peru.

• Competition Policy for Regulated Utility Industries in Britain Oxford Applied Economics Discussion Paper Series: 178, 1996. Nutall, R., and J. Vickers

  Provides a theoretical and a descriptive approach to the role of competition policy in regulated utilities. First, it outlines the main features of public utilities hampering the application of competition policy. Then, it analyzes the principles and practice of competition policy related to price-discrimination, cross-subsidization, horizontal and vertical integration, and access pricing. Finally, it describes the British experience in those areas.

• Competition Law and Policy — Theoretical Underpinnings in Infrastructure Regulation and Market Reform: Principles and Practice, edited by Margaret Arblaster and Mark Jamison. Canberra, Australia: ACCC and PURC, 1998, pp. 16-26. Smith, R.

  Holds that competition policy and competition law are not about removing or outlawing monopolies, but are based on the belief that a competitive market will result in economic efficiency and increased social welfare. Examines types of conduct: a) contracts, arrangements and understandings between competitors; b) misuse of existing market power; c) exclusive supply arrangements and other vertical relationships (such as resale price maintenance); and d) mergers and acquisitions. Describes the typical structure-conduct-performance paradigm and advocates considering the dynamic interplay between current sellers and potential entrants.

Sectoral References

ELECTRICITY

• Looking for Trouble: Competition Policy in the U.S. Electricity Industry CSEM Working Papers, CSEMWP-109, 2003. Bushnell, J.

  Discusses the shift in focus of electricity regulators from fostering a competitive market structure towards applying regulation to specific market outcomes since the summer 2000 California crisis. Investigates the extent to which this event is a failure of the policy or of the tools that were used to implement it. Describes the methods used by regulators to test for potential abuse of market power.

• Mitigating Market Power in Electricity Networks prepared for a conference titled "Towards a European Market of Electricity: What Have We Learnt from Recent Lessons? Spot Market Design, Derivatives and Regulation" held in Rome, June 2002. Newbery, D.

  Examines four features of the policy that mitigates market power in European electricity networks: capacity divestiture, entry stimulation, network interconnection, and capacity to apply regulation to the competitive generation segment. Shows how each of these actions taken separately can improve competition in wholesale electricity markets, but also how, unless carefully designed, this can be in conflict with another action with possibly long-term undesirable consequences. Lessons are drawn from California, the UK, and other European countries.

TELECOMMUNICATIONS

• ICT Regulation Toolkit Washington, D.C.: infoDev and the International Telecommunications Union, 2007, Module 2.

  Explains that governments adopt competition policies to respond to market failures. Intervention through competition policy may try to modify the behavior of firms or may try to control market structure. Holds that regulation can be both prospective (control future behavior) and retrospective (respond to past behavior). Competition policy is generally retrospective. Regulatory agencies sometimes coordinate activities with competition authorities and at other times serve as the competition authority.

• Analyzing Telecommunications Market Competition: A Comparison of Cases University of Florida, Department of Economics, PURC Working Paper, 2009. Jamison, Mark, Sanford Berg, and Liangliang Jiang

  Describes how U.S. telecommunications regulators and U.K. telecommunications regulators assess market power. Also describes steps Japan has taken to increase telecommunications competition.

• Competition in the Provision of Fixed Telephony Services Director General of Telecommunications, Office of Telecommunications, London, U.K., 2001. Oftel

  Describes the U.K. telecommunications regulator’s approach for protecting consumers in markets where competition is currently ineffective in constraining prices. States that the regulator first defines the relevant markets, then assesses the level of competition in each relevant market, and then determines the extent to which regulation is necessary in that market.

• Telecommunications Regulations: Institutional Structures and Responsibilities Working Paper no. 237, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Washington, D.C., 26 May 2000. Min, Wonki

  States that as the role of the competition authority has grown in telecommunications, the possibility of inconsistent regulatory rulings has increased. Holds that the principle of lex specialis usually applies. The three primary models for ensuring concurrent jurisdiction are: (1) Give full regulatory power to the competition authority (e.g., New Zealand); (2) Give the telecommunication regulator authority to apply competition rules to the telecommunication sector (e.g., U.K.); and (3) Establish a co-ordination mechanism to resolve competition issues. A number of countries have formal co-ordination mechanisms, for example, Switzerland.

TRANSPORTATION

• Law and Economic Regulation in Transportation Quorum Books. 1986. Dempsey, Paul Stephen

  Provides an overview of the development of transportation law in the United States in the last century. Traces the origins of economic regulation, the changing role of regulators, and the effects of deregulation. Economic regulations are separated into three areas: policing entry and exit from transportation, efforts to keep rates just, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory, and mergers, consolidations, antitrust, and other issues.

Other References

• Competition Policy: History, Theory and Practice Cheltenham, U.K.: Elgar, 2001. Neumann, Manfred

  Provides an international perspective on the development of competition policy, its underlying theories, and its application.

• Economics of Regulation and Antitrust Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2000, Chapter 1. Viscusi, W. Kip, John M. Vernon, and Joseph E. Harrington, Jr.

  Contrasts regulation and competition policy.

Key Words

Competition, Monopoly, Market Power, Regulation, Antitrust