Market Definition and Market Power in Competition Analysis - Some Practical Issues

Market definition plays a key role in competition analysis and has often proved controversial. However, it is merely a means to an end, the real issue being to establish whether or not firms have significant market power, i.e. the power to increase prices. This objective is rather different to the traditional neo-classical economic view of a market. The introduction of the SSNIP test in the US Department of Justice 1982 Merger Guidelines resulted in the development of new methods for defining markets and for measuring market power directly, thus eliminating the need to define the market at all.

Is Irish Utility Regulation Failing Consumers?

Over the past decade the energy and communications markets in Ireland, which were traditionally the preserve of State owned monopolies, have been opened up to competition to some extent, largely as a result of EU legislation. This has resulted in changes in the regulatory environment and the establishment of independent regulatory agencies for these industries. The present paper analyses the impact of these changes. It argues that competition, wherever it is possible, is superior to regulation. The paper suggests that policy to date has paid too little attention to measures necessary to promote greater competition and that regulation has failed to protect consumers. The paper concludes that active measures are necessary to promote greater competition in gas, electricity and postal services and that these need to be combined with reforms of the existing regulatory regime.

Late Conversion: The Impact of Professionalism on European Rugby Union

Rugby union only went professional in 1995, much later than other major team sports. League structures and arrangements regarding revenue sharing and salary caps differ between the three main European leagues. We consider the impact of these differences on competitive balance. In addition, unlike soccer, rugby does not require leagues to be organised along national lines, which has enabled the smaller rugby playing countries to establish a joint league. This has prevented a migration of all the best players to larger country leagues as has happened in soccer and resulted in a greater degree of competitive balance in European rugby competitions.Rugby, Economics

Joint Dominance and Tacit Collusion - An Analysis of the Irish Vodafone/O2 Case and the Implications for Competition and Regulatory Policy

The paper takes as its starting point the Irish telecom regulator ComReg’s finding of joint dominance by two firms in the mobile phone market in Ireland. The paper argues that the regulator’s decision was inconsistent with the facts in the case. However, it argues that the case raises wider questions about the whole concept of joint dominance as it has evolved under EU competition law which in our view is confused. We regard the approach of the ECJ in trying to use a single approach to joint dominance in merger analysis and in competition analysis as unjustified, misguided and at odds with economic analysis.

A Leage of Their Own: Landmark Supreme Court Judgement Clears Irish league Credit Unions of Abuse of Dominance

In a unanimous judgment handed down on 8th May 2007, the Irish Supreme Court upheld an appeal by the Irish League of Credit Unions (ILCU) against a High Court judgment that ILCU had abused a dominant position. The Irish Competition Authority had alleged that ILCU had abused its dominant position in the market for savings protection services (SPS) by limiting access to SPS services to its own members. The Authority claimed that credit unions wishing to obtain SPS services were required to also purchase credit union representation services from ILCU and that such tying amounted to an abuse of dominance by ILCU. This was the first abuse of dominance case brought by the Irish Competition Authority to go to a full hearing, the first to be appealed to the Supreme Court and the first Irish case under EC Regulation 1/2003. The case raised a number of interesting economic issues, which are of interest in the context of the debate on the need for a more economics based approach to Article 82. It has also resulted in some significant innovations in the hearing of competition cases by the Irish courts

Use of the AnnAGNPS Pollutant Loading Model for Prediction of Sediment Yields in a Mountainous Cumberland Plateau Region: Correlations with the Stream Bed Sediment Characteristics

This study attempts to develop a relationship with the hillslope sediment yield (estimated from a computer model) and the deposited sediment particle size characteristics within stream channels. By using specific hydrological parameters within a watershed, a calibrated Annualized Agricultural Non-Point Source (AnnAGNPS) pollutant loading model was created for four different sub-watersheds in the mountainous New River Basin of eastern Tennessee. The AnnAGNPS pollutant loading model predicted daily runoff and sediment yield reasonably well, but it poorly predicted daily peak flow rate for most sub-watersheds analyzed in the New River Basin. Overall, the AnnAGNPS pollutant loading model provided satisfactory results in a mountainous, nonagricultural landscape with a limited amount of climatic data available. The average annual hillslope sediment yield, in terms of clays, silts, and sands, was calculated with the AnnAGNPS model for years 2006 and 2007, to compare with sediment deposition characteristics in the streams. The fine particle size characteristics collected at specific bed deposition points were suspected to have a strong correlation with predicted sediment yield output from a calibrated AnnAGNPS pollutant loading model. The sites of the captured sediment were at locations just downstream of specific land use disturbances such as dirt roads, surface mining, and forest logging, all of which can be detrimental to the health of a stream environment and habitat if disturbances are not properly managed. In this study, the sediment collected at the channel bed deposition points represented the distribution of different material sizes that have recently moved within the stream during large discharge events. This investigation concluded that the certain measurements of the clays, silts, sands, and gravel material found in downstream sediment depositional points had a variety of significant relationships (p-value \u3c 0.05) with the clays, silts, sands, and total sediment yield occurring on the watershed hillslopes. Overall, there are a limited amount of studies that analyze these collections of fine sediment deposited in areas of the stream that have interrupted velocity forces due to channel shape, objects, or formations. This study showed that the use of the AnnAGNPS pollutant loading model and the analyzation of specific fine sediment at depositional points in the stream, proper watershed management of a rural mountainous region can be better established

Topological Quantum Field Theory And Strong Shift Equivalence

Given a TQFT in dimension d+1, and an infinite cyclic covering of a closed (d+1)-dimensional manifold M, we define an invariant taking values in a strong shift equivalence class of matrices. The notion of strong shift equivalence originated in R. Williams' work in symbolic dynamics. The Turaev-Viro module associated to a TQFT and an infinite cyclic covering is then given by the Jordan form of this matrix away from zero. This invariant is also defined if the boundary of M has a circle factor and the infinite cyclic cover of the boundary is standard. We define a variant of a TQFT associated to a finite group G which has been studied by Quinn. In this way, we recover a link invariant due to D. Silver and S. Williams. We also obtain a variation on the Silver-Williams invariant, by using the TQFT associated to G in its unmodified form.Comment: AMS-TeX, 8 pages, a few small changes change

Exchange Rates and Competitiveness. Quarterly Economic Commentary Special Article, October 1988

Employment in manufacturing industry in 1987 was 35,000 below its 1980 peak-according to the results of the Labour Force Surveys (CSO). It has been suggested by some authors that this is the result of a steady decline in competitiveness since the establishment of the European Monetary System (EMS) in 1979. (See for example Bacon (1986) and Walsh (1988) on this point). This loss in competitiveness is attributed to increases in labour costs relative to other EMS member states which have not been offset by movements in the exchange rate of the Irish pound. A devaluation has been suggested as a possible means of improving competitivenss and boosting output and employment in industry. The present paper questions such arguments. It argues that the decline in manufacturing employment reflects a number of factors besides changes in labour cost competitiveness and that a devaluation would not, therefore, be as effective as is sometimes suggested

Control and waypoint navigation of an autonomous ground vehicle

This thesis describes the initial development of the Texas A&M Autonomous Ground Vehicle test platform and waypoint following software, including the associated controller design. The original goal of the team responsible for the development of the vehicle was to enter the DARPA Grand Challenge in October 2005. A 2004 Ford F150 4x4 pickup was chosen as the vehicle platform and was modified with a 6Â suspension lift and 35Â tires, as well as a commercial drive-by-wire system. The waypoint following software, the design of which is described in this thesis, is written in C and successfully drives the vehicle on a course defined by GPS waypoints at speeds up to 50 mph. It uses various heuristics to determine desired speeds and headings and uses control feedback to guide the vehicle towards these desired states. A vehicle dynamics simulator was also developed for software testing. Ultimately, this software will accept commands from advanced obstacle avoidance software so that the vehicle can navigate in true off-road terrain