Revision of the Posted Workers' Directive : Equality at Last?

Recent evidence published by the European Commission suggests that the number of workers who are sent from one Member State to work in another for a limited period of time – ‘posted’ workers – has increased sharply. 1 However, posted workers often earn substantially less than local workers for the same work and there have been concerns about posted workers being vulnerable to fraudulent activities such as undeclared work practices. 2 The main relevant regulatory framework has hitherto been the Posted Workers’ Directive (PWD) 3 which came into force in 1996. The PWD has mixed objectives – the promotion of the transnational provision of services within a climate of fair competition while also guaranteeing respect for the rights of workers 4 – the balancing of which has led to tensions in its interpretation; culminating in the much -debated decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Laval 5 which created a difficult interface between the free movement provisions contained in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and national labour law. In particular, the decision had the effect of raising questions over the PWD’s ability, in its current form, to fulfil its objectives of ‘guaranteeing respect for the rights of workers’ and maintaining ‘a climate of fair competition’ between local and posted workers while also promoting ‘the transnational provision of services’. As part of its Work Programme 2016 and in recognition of ongoing tensions in the area of posted work, the European Commission published a proposal for a Directive amending the PWD on 8 March 2016. 6 This paper first contextualises the phenomenon of posted work in the EU and then briefly outlines the current legal framework governing posted work. A subsequent section discusses the extent to which the PWD fulfils its objective of guaranteeing ‘respect for the rights of workers ’ and identifies remaining gaps in protection. A final section assesses the Commission’s most recent proposal

Industry diversity, competition and firm relatedness: The impact on employment before and after the 2008 global financial crisis

Industry diversity, competition and firm relatedness: the impact on employment before and after the 2008 global financial crisis. Regional Studies. This study investigates the extent to which indicators of external-scale economies impacted employment growth in Canada over the period 2004–11. It focuses on knowledge spillovers between firms while accounting for Marshallian specialization, Jacobs’ diversity and competition by industry, as well as related and unrelated firm varieties in terms of employment and sales. It is found that the employment growth effects of local competition and diversity are positive, while the effect of Marshallian specialization is negative. Diversification is found to be particularly important for employment growth during the global financial crisis and immediately thereafter

Early Settlement in European Merger Control

We analyse the determinants of early settlement between merging parties and the European Commission over remedies that remove concerns of anticompetitive effects. This extends the previously narrow range of econometric literature on early settlement. Consistent with the theory of early settlement, our results confirm the importance of delay costs and of uncertainty, measured by the complexity of the economic analysis required for each merger. We also find a non-monotonic effect of agency resourcing, which raises questions about the Commission's efficiency in times of high case load. Econometrically, we select a sample of merger decisions in which the European Commission intervened due to concerns of anticompetitive effects, and our selection model provides estimates of the factors determining intervention by the Commission. Conclusions are drawn for public policy

A History of Competition: The Impact of Antitrust on Hong Kong’s Telecommunications Markets

Hong Kong has only had cross-sector competition law since 2015, but the city’s telecommunications markets have been subject to sector-specific antitrust provisions for over two decades. The importance of nurturing an efficient, innovative, and competitive telecoms industry for Hong Kong’s economic prosperity was acknowledged already at the time the sector was liberalized in the 1990s. Yet until the late 2000s, the government vehemently opposed the adoption of competition law in virtually all other sectors of the economy. This paper examines the effectiveness of the regulatory framework set up to guarantee the protection of competition in the telecommunications sector in Hong Kong. The results of the liberalization process are certainly remarkable, and the city boasts very competitive telecoms markets. However, it is argued that the enthusiasm over the results of the liberalization process may have eclipsed important competition issues in local markets, which could have been tackled through the development of a robust antitrust policy, but which were sadly left unheeded. On the basis of the analysis of the history of (sector-specific) competition law in the telecoms sector, this Article assesses the potential of the new Competition Ordinance to address the principal threats to competition in these markets. In doing so, the paper finds that, while the new regulatory framework may be generally suitable to combat collusion, it is less clear that it will effectively combat the problems associated with the creation of market power through mergers, or the abuse of that power

Price-concentration analysis in merger cases with differentiated products

This paper considers the empirical assessment of the relationship between prices and number of firms in local markets in geographic or, more generally, characteristic space and its use as evidence in merger cases. It outlines a structural, semi-nonparametric econometric model of competition in such markets, examines its testable implications in terms of price-concentration relationships, and demonstrates that the model is non-parametrically identified. This general approach to price-concentration analysis in differentiated product markets is illustrated in a small-scale application to cinemas in the UK. The application highlights the main decision points faced by an authority when assessing the weight that can be attached to this type of analysis as evidence

Behavioural economics in competition policy enforcement for financial product markets

Behavioural Economics (BE) acknowledges that individuals often make choices that are not entirely rational. The UK Competition and Markets Authority and Financial Conduct Authority have recently highlighted the relevance of BE. This article explains the difference it makes to the economic analysis of competition and why it is seen as particularly relevant to financial product markets. BE is already being used to frame and test theories of harm. It also brings experimental techniques to the analytical toolkit. The current approach is illustrated with examples from recent and ongoing cases. Finally, the risks of over-intervention and unintended harm from inappropriate remedies are highlighted

Pricing Decisions and Market Power in the UK Electricity Market: A VECM Approach

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Chrysovalantis Amountzias, Hulya Dagdeviren, and Tassos Patokos, 'Pricing Decisions and Market Power in the UK Electricity Market: A VECM Approach', Energy Policy, Vol. 108, pp. 467-473, September 2017. Under embargo. Embargo end date: 27 June 2019. The Version of Record is available online at doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2017.06.016 © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper examines the influence of market power in the formation of retail and wholesale electricity prices in the UK over 1998–2012 on the basis of Vector Error Correction model (VECM). Market power is measured as the influence of the market share of the Big Six in a dynamic demand and supply VECM. The findings indicate that market power of the Big Six in the wholesale industry has a significant and large positive influence on the wholesale mark-up in the short-run. The long-run estimates support the arguments about ‘revenue rebalancing’ resulting from vertical integration. That is, low market power (and hence low revenues) in the wholesale industry leads to higher prices (hence higher revenues) in the retail industry. These findings are in contrast to the CMA's finding that no market power is exercised in the wholesale industry. Retail electricity prices are affected directly by both the wholesale and retail market concentration ratios in the long-run rather than indirectly through the wholesale mark-up. Overall, the findings in this paper provide support for the view that the UK electricity market exhibits significant anti-competitive conduct in both the retail and wholesale segments.Peer reviewe

The restructuring and future of the British Rail system

The paper focuses mainly on reviewing and analysing the restructuring of Britain’s railways, including the re-cently published proposals for its future. The objective is to investigate the current market structure, the market behaviour and the overall performance of the British rail system over time. In order to learn what other people think about the problems of the industry and their solutions, interviews with key people associated with the in-dustry and several submissions of some key interest parties to the 2004 railway structure review are used in this paper. The results are that all major characteristics of the rail reform in Britain are seen as workable and empiri-cal data reveal that they have worked comparatively successfully, before Hatfield. Because of bad implementa-tion some of the features, and in particular the private infrastructure manager, have not worked well. Most of the problems have arisen because of indecision over refranchising and the disruption following Hatfield. Further-more the policy of the Government after Hatfield created an extremely risk averse culture within the industry, at a time when Railtrack had not enough insights about the state of the rail network. Although empirically unjustified, safety improvement became the main issue, costs escalated and reliability and productivity experienced a huge fall. The current White Paper “The Future of Rail” is seen as partially misleading and not at all detailed. At present it is only clear that the proposals will result in further increase of political interference. Much will depend on the precise implementation of the proposed measures and therefore the future of British rail remains unclear