The European Commission as a Constraint on its own Antitrust Policy

Although the legal and the political-scientific literatures on European competition policy (‘ECP’) are vast, there is no work that goes beyond the rationalization of stylized historical and/or legal facts. This approach may be justified on grounds of the political complexity of ECP and/or the heterogeneity of units of analysis. Nevertheless, the failure to come up with a positive device that identifies conditions under which specific policy decisions may or may not be possible has limited our assessments of the policy to value judgments rather than to true explanations. This paper attempts to remedy this situation by offering a logically complete and internally consistent model of ECP decision-making procedures. I show how the dependence of the European antitrust regulator (DG COMP) on a heterogeneous, multi-task and collegial organization (the Commission) severely constrains the feasible policy options of the former, and I argue that the nature and the goals of ECP are a function of (a) the ability of DG COMP to rely on national authorities, and (b) the distance between the ideal policy points of, on the one hand, the pivotal Directorate General in the Commission and, on the other hand, DG COMP and its internal opponents. Empirical work should follow

Foundational Economic Theories for Political-Scientific Inter-Branch Studies

Economic theories are increasingly popular in political science, and in particular in research on the relations between the legislative, the executive, and the judicial branches of government. Among these theories, principal-agent (´PA´) and transaction cost economics (´TCE´) feature particularly high in our research agenda. Yet, pushed by the view that "the content of ´science´ is primarily the methods and rules" (King et al. 1994: 9), and working with limited resources, political scientists have tended to neglect careful theorizing. PA and TCE are taken off-the-shelf without much prior scrutiny, and past conceptual mistakes are perpetuated. This paper aims at introducing and explaining the real PA, positive agency, TCE, and incomplete contracts theories for the purposes of political analysis. In a companion paper, I show the serious mistakes perpetuated by political scientists, and I argue that, faced with a choice between those four economic theories, we should place our bets on a revised version of TCE.Theory of delegation, political science, principal-agent models, transaction costs economics

Economic Theories and the Science of Inter-Branch Relations

One of the fastest-developing areas of political science studies the relationship between the different branches of government. Within that literature, the most popular research questions concern the delegation of powers by one branch to another, the resulting levels of discretion of the delegate, and the control mechanisms available to the delegator. The resulting analyses draw heavily from a handful of economic theories, such as principal-agent, the positive theory of agency, transactions cost economics, and incomplete contracts theory. This article (a) differentiates between those theories, (b) argues that mixing those theories is a self-defeating mistake, and (c) makes a strong and comparative point in favour of re-directing our studies in inter-branch relations towards transactions cost economics. Yet, a truly consistent political-scientific theory of transactions cost economics is still to be developed. The conclusions point to the way forward for the construction of such a theory.Branches of government; Policy-making; Principal-Agent; Transaction cost economics

PROPORTIONAL PROFIT TAXES AND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT UNDER PRODUCTION UNCERTAINTY

The impact of proportional profit taxes on input use is analyzed under conditions of production uncertainty and risk aversion. Two kinds of profit taxes are considered: proportional profit taxes with perfect loss offset and revenue-neutral profits taxes. Their impact on optimal input use is examined under various forms of production uncertainty, such as the Just-Pope model and the cases of multiplicative and additive uncertainty. It is shown that the structure of risk attitudes, the form of production uncertainty, the underlying (stochastic) technical interdependencies, and the risk-input relations are crucial features in determining the impact of proportional profit taxes on optimal input use.Production Economics,

Pre-Congestion Notification Encoding Comparison

DiffServ mechanisms have been developed to support Quality of Service (QoS). However, the level of assurance that can be provided with DiffServ without substantial over-provisioning is limited. Pre-Congestion Notification (PCN) investigates the use of per-flow admission control to provide the required service guarantees for the admitted traffic. While admission control will protect the QoS under\ud normal operating conditions, an additional flow termination mechanism is necessary in the times of heavy congestion (e.g. caused by route changes due to link or node failure).\ud Encoding and their transport are required to carry the congestion and pre-congestion information from the congestion and pre-congestion points to the decision points. This document provides a survey of\ud several encoding methods, using comparisons amongst them as a way to explain their strengths and weaknesses.\u

Taxonomy of P2P Applications

Peer-to-peer (p2p) networks have gained immense popularity in recent years and the number of services they provide continuously rises. Where p2p-networks were formerly known as file-sharing networks, p2p is now also used for services like VoIP and IPTV. With so many different p2p applications and services the need for a taxonomy framework rises. This paper describes the available p2p applications grouped by the services they provide. A taxonomy framework is proposed to classify old and recent p2p applications based on their characteristics

Mobile IP: state of the art report

Due to roaming, a mobile device may change its network attachment each time it moves to a new link. This might cause a disruption for the Internet data packets that have to reach the mobile node. Mobile IP is a protocol, developed by the Mobile IP Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) working group, that is able to inform the network about this change in network attachment such that the Internet data packets will be delivered in a seamless way to the new point of attachment. This document presents current developments and research activities in the Mobile IP area

Cloud computing services: taxonomy and comparison

Cloud computing is a highly discussed topic in the technical and economic world, and many of the big players of the software industry have entered the development of cloud services. Several companies what to explore the possibilities and benefits of incorporating such cloud computing services in their business, as well as the possibilities to offer own cloud services. However, with the amount of cloud computing services increasing quickly, the need for a taxonomy framework rises. This paper examines the available cloud computing services and identifies and explains their main characteristics. Next, this paper organizes these characteristics and proposes a tree-structured taxonomy. This taxonomy allows quick classifications of the different cloud computing services and makes it easier to compare them. Based on existing taxonomies, this taxonomy provides more detailed characteristics and hierarchies. Additionally, the taxonomy offers a common terminology and baseline information for easy communication. Finally, the taxonomy is explained and verified using existing cloud services as examples

RMD (Resource Management in Diffserv) QoS-NSLP model

This draft describes a local QoS model, denoted as Resource Management in Diffserv (RMD) QoS model, for NSIS that extends the IETF Differentiated Services (Diffserv) architecture with a scalable admission control and resource reservation concept. The specification of this QoS model includes a description of its QoS parameter information, as well as how that information should be treated or interpreted in the network