Competition and Regulation in Network Industries

Competition and Regulation in Network Industries
Author: Jean-Marc Zogheib
Publisher:
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2021-10-13
Genre:
ISBN: 9781954750999

While particularly dynamic and innovative, the digital and telecommunication industries are found to have a great tendency towards concentration, resulting in strong market power and raising concerns from competition and regulatory authorities. In this study focusing on such network industries, Jean-Marc Zogheib explores the interplay between public policy and firms' strategies by combining various tools of theoretical economic analysis adopted from industrial economics, network economics, and platform economics. Mr. Zogheib's thesis consists of three distinct essays: the first chapter examines how merger policy affects firms' entry strategies, the second chapter shifts the focus to public intervention by considering how the coexistence of private and public players affects competition and investment, while the third chapter investigates the role of privacy in competition between digital platforms and the importance of consumer data in the competitive analysis of mergers. This book clearly illustrates how economics can contribute essential building blocks to the construction of competitive reasoning and how the integration of competition law into economic models extended their collective utility. An important read for lawyers and economists alike. The book was awarded the inaugural Concurrences PhD Award in Economics.

Three Essays on Networks and Public Economics

Three Essays on Networks and Public Economics
Author: Pier-André Bouchard St Amant
Publisher:
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2013
Genre:
ISBN:

This thesis is a collection of three essays. The first two study how ideas spread through a network of individuals, and how it an advertiser can exploit it. In the model I develop, users choose their sources of information based on the perceived usefulness of their sources of information. This contrasts with previous literature where there is no choice made by network users and thus, the information flow is fixed. I provide a complete theoretical characterization of the solution and define a natural measure of influence based on choices of users. I also present an algorithm to solve the model in polynomial time on any network, regardless of the scale or the topology. I also discuss the properties of a network technology from a public economic standpoint. In essence, a network allows the reproduction of ideas for free for the advertiser. If there is any free-riding problem, I show that coalitions of users on the network can solve such problem. I also discuss the social value of networks, a value that cannot be captured for profit. The third essay is completely distinct from the network paradigm and instead studies funding rules for public universities. I show that a funding rule that depends solely on enrolment leads to "competition by franchise" and that such behavior is sometimes inefficient. I suggest instead an alternate funding rule that allows government to increase welfare without increasing spending in universities.

Essays in Game Theory and Network Economics

Essays in Game Theory and Network Economics
Author: Andrin Pelican
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019
Genre:
ISBN:

This dissertation contains three essays in Game Theory and Network Economics. The First Chapter studies how economic networks are formed. Random networks occur in many economic situations, such as transactions among financial institutions, trade between countries or social relationships. Network formation can be based on utility theory and translates into a game in a normal form. For this formation process, we derive a probability distribution over all networks. Further, we derive a test procedure to test whether the formation only depends on node characteristics or whether it involves strategic interaction. This test procedure does not require knowledge of model parameters. We show how a locally most powerful test statistic can be derived from the utility function. The network formation theory is extended from directed networks to undirected networks, in which a link is formed by bilateral agreement. The test procedure can also be used to test model parameters and to analyze restricted networks. Simulation results support the theory. The Second Chapter analyzes credit networks. Credit contracts among financial institutions form in a natural way a directed network. A default of a financial institution affects another institution via multiple paths in the network. The credit claims are settled in accordance with the seniority of the contract. The objective of this paper is to determine how the network and seniority structures impact the stability under shocks. In order to achieve this goal, we develop a simulation algorithm. The algorithm considers the network as well as the seniority constraints. We prove the correctness of the algorithm and derive a polynomial bound on the runtime. The simulation results indicate that the characteristics of a network have an impact on the overall stability of the financial system. Cyclic borrowing has a negative effect on stability. In a distressed situation, cyclic borrowing structure enhances.

Essays in Network Economics

Essays in Network Economics
Author: Pablo Daniel Azar
Publisher:
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2019
Genre:
ISBN:

This thesis is a collection of three chapters, each representing an individual paper. The first chapter studies how the formation of supply chains affects economic growth. It provides a new tractable model for supply chain formation. The main innovation in this model is that, firms can choose suppliers to maximize profits. Individual firms' actions determine the equilibrium input-output network, and affect macroeconomic variables such as GDP. We then apply this model to understand the effect of changing supply chains on American productivity during the 1987-2007 period. The second chapter studies how a monopolist may sell multiple goods to strategic bidders. The monopolist may face a series of combinatorial constraints. For example, it may be forced to allocate at most one good to each bidder, and it may have additional constraints on which bidders can be allocated which goods. Furthermore, the monopolist does not know bidders' demand distributions. Rather, it only knows one sample from the demand distribution corresponding to each bidder. Nevertheless, by developing new online optimization algorithms, we show how simple mechanisms can approximate the monopolist's optimal revenue. Finally, the third chapter, develops a new model of firm optimization to understand how shrinking electronics have contributed to increased productivity and welfare in the United States, during the 2002-2017 period. In this model, firms face constraints on the size of the products they can build. As intermediate inputs, such as electronics, shrink, the firms' production possibilities frontier expands, and GDP increases.

Principles of Political Economy -

Principles of Political Economy -
Author: John Stuart Mill
Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.
Total Pages: 477
Release: 2006-09-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1596052406

Can national growth be sustained indefinitely? How much should government intervene in a competitive market economy? The questions John Stuart Mill raised a century and a half ago, in 1848's Principles of Political Economy, and the answers he found, are just as critical-and just as contentiously debated-today. Through a lens of what the philosopher himself termed "philosophical radicalism"-and what some today call "democratic liberalism"-Mill takes a fresh look at Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and other influential works of political thought of his time, and recasts them from a more scientific viewpoint, suggesting that such realities as the unequal distribution of wealth were not "natural" but rather a matter of human choice... choices we continue to have to make in our ever more complicated economy. Also available from Cosimo Classics: Selected Writings of John Stuart Mill and On Liberty. English philosopher and politician JOHN STUART MILL (1806-1873) was one of the foremost figure of Western intellectual thought in the late 19th century. He served as an administrator in the East Indian Company from 1823 to 1858, and as a member of parliament from 1865 to 1868. Among his essays on a wide range of political and social thought are On Liberty (1859), Considerations on Representative Government (1861), and The Subjection of Women (1869).