Over the last decade, the European Union has undertaken major market-opening reforms in the area of network industries. The liberalization process has now been completed in the air transport and electronic communications sectors and has achieved considerable progress in other network industries, such as postal services, energy (electricity and gas), and rail transport. Creating competition in network industries is not an easy matter, however. Because they benefit from certain advantages such as a large initial market share and control of essential facilities, incumbents typically retain substantial market power in a number of relevant markets and may even use their position to prevent others from engineering such markets. Controlling market power is thus one of a number of key concerns in network industries. It can be achieved in two main ways; either through the adoption and implementation of sector-specific rules or through the application of competition rules. There are advantages and disadvantages to both options, but it is a combination of the two that generally prevents incumbents from abusing their market power in liberalized markets. Competition law and sector-specific regulation provide for the application of remedies on incumbents or other operators holding significant market power. Such remedies are either structural or a behavioural. In some occasions they will apply ex ante, while in others ex post. This book comprises a collection of outstanding essays dealing with the complex legal and economic issues raised by remedies in network industries. While some of these essays analyse remedies from a generic point of view, others focus on specific remedies applied specifically in particular sectors. The sectors covered in this volume include electronic communications, postal services, energy (electricity and gas), and air transport. The final paper also presents a discussion of the United States approach to remedies in network industries. The essays comprised in this book have been written by leading academics (lawyers and economists), as well as private practitioners.

In the United States, the topic of remedies in network industries cuts across antitrust law and sector-specific regulation, including telecommunications. The legal and economic understandings of a quot;remedyquot; are not synonymous in American usage. In law, a remedy is the corrective measure that a court orders following a finding of liability. With the exception of interlocutory relief, such as preliminary injunctions or temporary restraining orders (which might apply to a proposed merger, for example), legal remedies are retrospective in their orientation. They seek to right some past wrong. They may do so through the payment of money (whether that is characterized as the payment of damages, fines, disgorgement, or something else). Or they may seek to do so through a mandated change in market structure, as in the case of divestiture, or in the imposition of affirmative or negative duties, as in the case of quot;behavioralquot; injunctions. United States v. Microsoft Corp. presented the tradeoff between these various remedial alternatives. Industry-specific regulation, such as regulation of the telecommunications industry by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), is an alternative to reliance on liability rules. Therefore, it is not obvious what a quot;remedyquot; is in a traditional regulated network industry - at least if we are employing the standard American meaning of a legal remedy.In contrast to these legal connotations of a remedy, the economic meaning of a remedy emphasizes market failure. The market failure may result from the unchecked exercise of market power, or from the uncompensated generation of an external cost or benefit, or from an insufficiency of information with which to make efficient choices concerning consumption, production, or investment. Whereas lawyers think of a remedy as what to do after a finding of liability, economists think of a remedy as what to do after a finding of market failure. The two approaches overlap perfectly if legislators and courts make liability rules that are triggered only after a finding of market failure. Of course, if legislators and courts actually did so, the Journal of Law amp; Economics would be a very slim volume that would have ceased publication years ago.

This book convincingly argues that from a theoretical point of view present day network industries offer opportunities for strategic behaviour and that these opportunities are also actually utilized in practice. The authors show that this behaviour can be harmful to the realization of the expected positive effects of institutional changes such as liberalization and privatization (e.g., innovation and lower prices). The authors make their case in a solid theoretical way illustrated with insightful case studies. This book is a must for academics, managers and policy makers in today s network industries. John Groenewegen, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands This in-depth book explains how institutional changes such as the privatization and liberalization of network industries, for example transport, energy or telecommunications, can frequently be disappointing. The expected benefits such as lower prices, innovation and better services fail to materialize, often because the number of competitors is low. The authors demonstrate how strategic actor behaviour of one or more of the firms involved can help explain these disappointing results. This book elucidates the concept of strategic behaviour and portrays it in real-life examples to aid our understanding of this important phenomenon in terms of policy and organizational decision-making. It clearly demonstrates the adverse effects strategic behaviour can exert on the quality of infrastructure provision after liberalization. The theoretical sections are backed by empirical examples from throughout the world. The unique multidisciplinary approach will ensure a broad readership among students, researchers and policy-makers with an interest in the economics, politics and management of infrastructure and network industries.

The landmark Microsoft case raises challenging questions concerning antitrust remedies. In this Article, we propose a framework for assessing the costs and benefits of different remedies, particularly divestiture, in monopolization cases involving network industries. Our approach can assist a court or enforcement agency not only in analyzing the welfare effects of divestiture, but also in choosing more generally among alternative kinds of remedies. The framework would, for example, apply to a court's choice between damages and injunctive remedies or between behavioral injunctions and structural injunctions. After developing our framework, we apply it to the divestiture proposals made by the government and others in the Microsoft case. We argue that those proposals leave open important questions that must be answered before divestiture can be shown to be either the best remedial alternative or to create likely net gains in economic welfare.

Examines regional competition policy developments in South East Asia, exploring a broad range of related issues from diverse perspectives.

This innovative study of the role of competition law in the telecommunications industry starts from a classic perspective: While, in principle, regulation benefits social welfare and efficient allocation of resources, past regulatory experience shows that regulation can be flawed and lead to welfare harm rather than good. In the telecommunications industry specifically, inappropriately designed sector-specific remedies and regulatory delays in the introduction of new telecommunications services can hold up the development of the market towards effective competition and could incur considerable welfare losses. In addition, conventional antitrust analysis still lags behind the dynamic nature of the electronic communications markets. Milena Stoyanova sets out to establish a new understanding of the role of sector-specific regulation and competition law enforcement in the electronic communications sector, addressing such questions as the following: and• Why a new regulatory framework? and• Are sectoral regulation and competition law enforcement mutually exclusive or complementary? and• Why should electronic communications markets be regulated to conform to competition law principles? and• What does competition law add to sector-specific regulation? and• What is the relationship or proportion between regulation and competition law enforcement? An overview of the telecommunications liberalization process initiated at European Community level reveals such problems as a divergent approach of national regulatory authorities in the application of one and the same norms, inability of competition authorities to rightly assess the technicalities underlying a competition problem, and difficulty in carrying out a periodical oversight of compliance with the competition law remedies. The author discusses the legal basis and rationale for the application of the essential facility doctrine to the electronic communications sector, and argues for new regulatory responses to the emergence of collective dominant firms in an oligopolistic setting and to the potential of multifirm conduct to restrict competition through price squeezing and other tactics. The book concludes with a specific case study on the harmonisation of recent Bulgarian legislation with the European Community sector-specific and competition law regimes andà propos the electronic communications sector. Effective competition in the electronic communications market is crucial for securing the dynamic role of the entire information and communications technologies sector, of which electronic communications form the largest segment. The sound and well-informed recommendations in this book ably address common and persistent problems, making Competition Problems in Liberalized Telecommunications a forward-looking mainstay for practitioners and other professionals involved in all aspects of the field.

This insightful book discusses the interaction of sector-specific regulation and competition policy. In particular, it identifies emerging trends and reflects on the nature of network regulation in the energy and telecom industries.

In recent decades, network industries around the world have gone through periods of de- and re-regulation. With vast amounts of sometimes conflicting research carried out into specific network industries, the time has come for a critical over-arching assessment of this entire industry in order to provide a platform of understanding to aid future research and practice. This comprehensive resource provides an orientation for academics, policy makers and managers as to the main economic, regulatory and commercial challenges in the network industries. The book is split into sections covering market, policy, regulation, management perspectives, whilst all of the key network industries are covered, including energy, transport, water and telecommunications. Overseen by world-class Editors and experts in the field, this inter-disciplinary resource is essential reading for students and researchers in international business, industrial economics and the industries.

Professor Ullrich is thoughtful and attracted star scholars from many countries, so the papers and discussion are provocative and introduce recent economic thinking, although many are written by lawyers. . . The text is lucid and interesting, the thought innovative and anyone seriously interested in competition policy should read these papers and the comments with pleasure. Valentine Korah, World Competition This collection of papers and comments deserves to be widely read, and it should appeal to academics and practitioners alike. The great mix of topics and the variety of views offered make this a very stimulating contribution to the discussion of the new paradigm of EC competition law, the more economic approach, and its implications for the application and interpretation of the various EU antitrust rules. Thomas Eilmansberger, European Law Journal The editor should be congratulated for bringing together this diverse group of scholars whose spirited disagreements remind one of the many challenges faced in exploring the role and function of competition law. Giorgio Monti, European Review of Contract Law With contributions from leading scholars from all over Europe and the US, this book covers the major areas of substantive competition law from an evolutionary perspective. The leitmotiv of the book has been to assess the dividing line between safeguarding and regulating competition, which it does by reviewing the following subjects: foundations of competition policy in the EU and the US strategic competition policy the evolution of European competition law from a national (Italian) perspective the block exemption of vertical agreements after four years the new Technology Transfer Block Exemption cooperative networking mergers in the media sector abuse of market power concepts of competition in sector specific regulation competition, regulation and systems coherence efficiency claims in EU competition law and sector specific regulation. The Evolution of European Competition Law will be of great interest to lawyers, economists, academics, judges and public officials working in the fields of competition law and policy.

This book brings satisfying definition and clarity to this field at last. Exploring the substantive differences between competition law and sector-specific regulation after the methodological integration, it presents the first detailed analysis of the many hundreds of notifications and Commission letters generated under the Article 7 procedure, identifying the most relevant cases dealing with market definition, market power, and remedies. It compares these decisions with relevant competition law cases and highlights elements with a bearing on sector-specific regulation. It also offers hugely valuable guidance through the vast amount of documents in the Commission’s CIRCA database. Topics and issues raised include the following: definition of product markets; delineation of geographic markets (including sub-national); different practices in relation to assessing single market power and collective market power; and competition problems such as refusal to deal, margin squeeze, non-price discrimination, and excessive pricing. There can be little doubt that this is the new reference point for researchers and practitioners in this domain. By systematically categorizing the concepts and legal criteria and building a solid theoretical framework on the intersection of competition law and sector-specific regulation, the author has created a resource that is sure to be welcomed by all those involved in regulation of electronic communications markets and network industries in general: academic scholars, telecommunications regulators at the EU and Member State levels, competition authorities, law firms specializing in IT/communications law, practitioners in IT and telecommunications companies, and consultants in the sector. The book will also prove very useful for scholars and practitioners in other parts of the world interested in comparing the EU system with their own.