Accommodating minority shareholdings within the European Union Merger Control regime: advocating a more cooperative way forward

The paper focuses upon a neglected area of EU merger control, the acquisition of minority shareholdings that have the potential to cause competitive harm at the European Union level, and which therefore should be vetted under EU law. Using economic theory and actual cases vetted by European Regulators, the paper demonstrates an EU regulatory enforcement gap in respect of the aforesaid minority shareholdings. The Commission’s recent proposal to end this gap, the so-called targeted transparency system, is then critically explored, revealing that the proposed system suffers from the same problem as the EU merger control regime in respect of mergers with a potential community competition concern: neither can guarantee that nearly all the said mergers and minority shareholdings cases would be vetted under EU law. Therefore, an alternative more cooperative approach, which guarantees that virtually all such cases would come under EU law, is put forward. The more cooperative approach concerning mergers is discussed first, as the approach toward minority shareholdings is an extension of it, establishing an integrated approach. The paper demonstrates how this approach would guarantee that virtually all mergers with a potential Community competition concern would come under EU law, leading to a number of positives: the near elimination of the misallocation problem and associated issues, in addition to streamlining the operation of the said architecture. Thereafter, the paper reveals how the more cooperative approach ensures that virtually all minority shareholdings with a potential to cause competitive harm at the EU level would be vetted under EU law, not only ending this enforcement gap but also leading to an architecture that is more streamlined than would be the case if the Commission’s proposal became law. It is, of course, recognised that the more cooperative approach does not address the minority shareholdings’ enforcement gap that exists at the national level, excluding the three member states which already have this vetting capability

The normalisation of Food Aid: What happened to feeding people well?

In the UK, food poverty has increased in the last 15 years and the food aid supply chain that has emerged to tackle it is now roughly 10 years old. In this time, we have seen the food aid supply chain grow at a rate that has astounded many.  Recently that growth has been aided by a grant of £20m from a large supermarket chain. It appears institutionalisation is just around the corner, if not already here. It also appears that there is far greater emphasis on dealing with  the symptoms as opposed to solving the root causes of the problem. As an opinion piece, this paper reflects on some of the prevalent issues, and suggests some ways forward

Hormone replacement therapy

Martha Hickey, Jane Elliott, Sonia Louise Daviso

Statistical Modeling of Spatial Extremes

The areal modeling of the extremes of a natural process such as rainfall or temperature is important in environmental statistics; for example, understanding extreme areal rainfall is crucial in flood protection. This article reviews recent progress in the statistical modeling of spatial extremes, starting with sketches of the necessary elements of extreme value statistics and geostatistics. The main types of statistical models thus far proposed, based on latent variables, on copulas and on spatial max-stable processes, are described and then are compared by application to a data set on rainfall in Switzerland. Whereas latent variable modeling allows a better fit to marginal distributions, it fits the joint distributions of extremes poorly, so appropriately-chosen copula or max-stable models seem essential for successful spatial modeling of extremes.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/11-STS376 the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Rejoinder to "Statistical Modeling of Spatial Extremes"

Rejoinder to "Statistical Modeling of Spatial Extremes" by A. C. Davison, S. A. Padoan and M. Ribatet [arXiv:1208.3378].Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/12-STS376REJ the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

NORTHEAST SOYBEAN ACREAGE RESPONSE USING EXPECTED NET RETURNS

Expected prices and expected net returns from cropping activities are used to estimate soybean acreage response in the Northeast. Futures prices and lagged cash prices constitute proxies for price expectations. Expected net returns appear as good or better than expected prices for estimating acreage response. Short-run and long-run elasticities of soybean acreage with respect to expected net returns from soybeans are estimated as 0.5 and 1.6 for the northeast region. Soybean acreage appears less responsive to changes in expected net returns than to expected changes in prices.Crop Production/Industries,