Italy and the Antitrust Law: an Efficient Delay?

The paper examines the reasons that induced Italian Parliament not to approve an antitrust law at the end of the nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth, while in the United States, the first national antitrust provision, the Sherman Act, was adopted in 1890. Was the American decision to legally enforce competition not optimal? Or was Italians' laissez-faire policy on this issue inefficient? Or, still, were there significant enough differences in the underlying structure of the economy between the two States to justify two different, yet both efficient, paths in the adoption of the law? The results, albeit controversial, seem to support the last hypothesis. The thread of the argument is the following: The United States economy was solid, so competition enhanced social welfare by eliminating the distorsions generated by positions of market power by firms. On the other hand, Italian economy was more diverse. The most developed industries were smaller and more competitive, in the analyzed time interval, than their Northern American counterpart. The heavy industry, which lagged well behind both American and other European competitors, needed instead to operate in a non competitive market to catch up. Enforcing competition would have been useless for the former group, even harmful for the latter. As a consequence, the various lobbies whose special interests have collided with the public interest do not appear to have significantly affected the pattern of adoption of Antitrust.Antitrust Italy History

Uncertainty over Demand and the Market for Energy

The paper examines the three following issues connected to the energy market: 1.Uncertainty ex ante over demand, and the consequent choice of risking to either overproduce, or to underserve the market. 2.Capacity constraints for the energy firms, with the consequence that production is shared by a number of plants. 3.High fixed costs of setting up the distribution procedure, which make it likely to have regional monopolies in the retail market. The questions that the paper tries to answer are the following: 1) Will the energy firms be willing to connect in order to avoid blackouts? The answer in the paper is yes, but we did not consider the fixed cost of establishing the connection, very important indeed 2) What is the optimal structure of the market, i.e., what would the outcome of an unregulated process be? Would this outcome avoid blackouts? I believe the questions are important, as the energy market is subject to a lot of regulations that ASSUME to be inspired to a competitive outcome. But the question is: are we sure the competitive outcome regulators inspire to is the true competitive outcome? And more, are we sure that the true competitive outcome wouldn't be welfare enhancing also for consumers with respect to the regulation outcome?

Uncertainty over Demand and the Energy Market

The paper examines the three following issues connected to the energy market: 1.Uncertainty ex ante over demand, and the consequent choice of risking to either overproduce, or to underserve the market. 2.Capacity constraints for the energy firms, with the consequence that production is shared by a number of plants. 3.High fixed costs of setting up the distribution procedure, which make it likely to have regional monopolies in the retail market. The questions that the paper tries to answer are the following: 1) Will the energy firms be willing to connect in order to avoid blackouts? The answer in the paper is yes, but we did not consider the fixed cost of establishing the connection, very important indeed 2) What is the optimal structure of the market, i.e., what would the outcome of an unregulated process be? Would this outcome avoid blackouts?

Political Competition in Government Formation: the Effect of Simultaneous Policy Bidding on the Political Outcome

We present an alternative model of government formation in which two parties simultaneously and inpendently announce their polices proposals through a take-it-or-leave-it offer, to a third party - the formateur -, which picks the one that maximizes its own utility. As a consequence, the chosen policy proposal is implemented by a government coalition composed of the formateur and the party associated with the selected policy proposal. The model purposedly captures the political competition arising among the parties other than the formateur for the partnership in the governing coalition. The political equilibria resulting from the model confirm that the intensification of political competition among the parties, implied by the present framework, is beneficial for the formateur.Political competition goverment formation

Bottleneck co-ownership as a regulatory alternative

This paper proposes a regulatory mechanism for vertically related industries in which the upstream “bottleneck” segment faces significant returns to scale while other (downstream) segments may be more competitive. In the proposed mechanism, the ownership of the upstream firm is allocated to downstream firms in proportion to their shares of input purchases. This mechanism, while preserving downstream competition, partially internalizes the benefits of exploiting economies of scale resulting from an increase in downstream output. We show that this mechanism is more efficient than a disintegrated market structure in which the upstream natural monopoly bottleneck sets a price equal to average cost.Regulation, vertically related industries, co-ownership

MIncreasing Market Interconnection: an analysis of the Italian Electricity Spot Market

We estimate the bene ts resulting from completely interconnecting the Italian electricity spot market. The�market is currently divided into two geographic zones - North and South - with limited interzonal transmission capacity that often induces congestion, and hence potential inefficiency. By simulating a fully interconnected market for May 2004, we predict that the total spot market expenditure reduces substantially by almost four percent. Our analysis finds evidence that the (partly State owned) major firm in the market does not currently maximize its short-term profit, and would benefit as well from improved interconnection.Transmission constraints,self-regulated monopoly,zonal pricing,congestion

Increasing Market Interconnection: An analysis of the Italian Electricity Spot Market

In this paper we estimate the benefits resulting from interconnecting the Italian electricity spot market. The market is currently divided into two geographic zones – North and South – with limited interzonal transmission capacity that often induces congestion, and hence potential inefficiency. By simulating a fully interconnected market, we predict that the total spot market expenditure would reduce substantially. Moreover, since savings do not increase linearly with the size of new transmission capacity, even a slight increment to transmission capacity is found to bring substantial benefits to end users. Finally, our analysis shows that the (partly State owned) dominant firm in the market is not maximizing short-term profits.Transmission constraints, zonal pricing, congestion, electricity industry

Bottleneck co-ownership as a regulatory alternative

This paper proposes a regulatory mechanism for vertically related industries in which the upstream “bottleneck” segment faces significant returns to scale while other (downstream) segments may be more competitive. In the proposed mechanism, the ownership of the upstream firm is allocated to downstream firms in proportion to their shares of input purchases. This mechanism, while preserving downstream competition, partially internalizes the benefits of exploiting economies of scale resulting from an increase in downstream output. We show that this mechanism is more efficient than a disintegrated market structure in which the upstream natural monopoly bottleneck sets a price equal to average cost

Relazioni verticali e organizzazione d’impresa: nuove tematiche sul fronte dell’oligopolio

Il saggio analizza lo sviluppo recente dei modelli di oligopolio in riferimento alle strutture verticali, caratterizzati, cioè, da una filiera di produzione organizzata in diversi stadi successivi

Strategic investment in merchant transmission: the impact of capacity utilization rules

In this paper we look at the relative merits of two capacity utilization regimes in the merchant electricity transmission network: Must offer (Mo) where the entire capacity installed is made available for transmission and Non Must Offer (NMo) where some capacity could be withheld. We look at two specific cases: (i) Demand for transmission varies across time, and (ii) Vertical integration is allowed between investors in transmission network and electricity generators. In the case of time-varying demand under Mo, we find that a monopolist may underinvest in transmission when compared to NMo, although NMo may lead to more capacity withholding. In the case of vertical integration, we find that when the market power is with the generators of the exporting node, without vertical integration no welfare-enhancing merchant investment would occur. Further, if the generators in the importing node have market power, which of the two regimes is welfare enhancing depends on the parameter values. In case vertical integration is better, then Mo is better than NMo. Finally, we also argue that the incentive to collude among various transmission network investors is mitigated with Mo in place