Independent Sector Regulators and their Relationship with Competition Authorities

Independent sector regulators and competition authorities share many objectives and common interests, particularly because they both can play key roles in promoting effective and beneficial competition. In this note, the criteria and rationale for the independence of sector regulators and competition authorities are explained, along with a suggestion that independence may sometimes be especially critical for institutions with broad economic oversight and quasi-judicial responsibilities or, alternately, for institutions most subject to influence of special interests. The note suggests that sector regulators may benefit, in times of high technological change and uncertainty, from principle-based laws that allow regulators the flexibility to adjust their precise rules in light of evolving circumstances. Moreover, the note suggests that in some respects, the sectors subject to independent regulation may usefully include other sectors beyond those most traditionally associated with independent regulation. Ultimately, ensuring consistency and convergence between sector regulator and competition authority objectives and actions is important; ironically, independence can make ensuring such consistency through direct co-operation a challenge. Based on international experience, multiple mechanisms exist for achieving or encouraging such consistency; some combination of these merits consideration by designers of competition policy regimes

Market Power: The Inequality Connection

Market power is increasingly considered a potential source of inequality. Interestingly, during the same period in which mark-ups are likely to have risen substantially, and inequality to have increased, extreme poverty has fallen dramatically. These results suggest the ultimate mechanisms driving these changes may be complex. To the extent that market power is one of the origins of inequality, results of a long-run analysis based on a steady state model incorporating market power suggest that, out of 8 major OECD countries, Germany and the U.S. have the largest per capita wealth impact from reducing market power

Towards an understanding of marketing planning practices in indigenous small firms in the electronics sector in the republic of Ireland

This thesis examines the role which marketing plays in the planning process of small indigenous companies in the electronics sector in the Republic of Ireland. In particular it attempts to identify the main influencing factors which shape the particular approach adopted by such firms. The research involved a comprehensive review of the literature on small business policy in Ireland, entrepreneurship, growth and the small firm, and also strategy and planning. A pluralistic approach to the design of the research programme was adopted. This involved three phases; consisting of in - depth interviews, telephone interviews and final seven detailed case studies of electronics firms. The quantitative phase showed that there was a strong relationship between the size of the customer base and the tendency to adopt an informal, intuitive approach to planning. Likewise there was evidence to suggest that the size of the company (defined as the number of employees) also influences the approach to planning. There was no evidence to suggest that the length of time a company was established, the propensity to export, or the category of product manufactured, had any significant impact on the approach to planning. The case studies identified a number of critical variables and influencing factors on the approach to planning. The most salient issues were the approach to customer management, the way in which relationships are managed, the ability to manage critical events effectively, the dichotomy between strategic decision - making and operational decision - making and the ability to delegate the latter decisions to other personnel in the company. The cases revealed that there is a strong tendency to formalise the annual plan; usually in the form of a budgetary exercise. The thesis concludes by noting that these issues need to be more fully understood before adopting a prescriptive approach to planning; as is the case in much of the extant literature

Advantages of Licence-Exempt Spectrum::Allocation Versus Auctions for Upper 6Ghz Spectrum

This paper examines the relative advantages of allocating spectrum by auction or without licensing. The debate over how to allocate the spectrum will at times rest fundamentally on the challenges of choosing between alternative technologies. This paper notes that economic benefits of a highly distributed and non-excludable technology, like Wi-Fi, may be higher than for an excludable technology, like mobile data, but that the bidding capacities of each technology can easily sway towards an excludable technology due to a highly distributed technology’s inability to appropriate gains and thus to reflect its underlying social gains in bids. This argument is developed specifically with respect to the upper 6 GHz band of spectrum. The paper argues that reserving this band as unlicensed spectrum would plausibly deliver higher social surplus, higher economic value to government and reduced user costs compared to allocating the band via auction

U.S. v. Microsoft: Where Did the Time Go?

Antitrust law enforcement is sometimes criticized for taking too long to obtain results. On the one hand, slowness has potentially harmful consequences for market competition, consumers and business. On the other hand, fast outcomes are perhaps more likely to contain errors in fact and assessment and less likely to form good precedent. To provide a detailed examination of length of process and potential market consequences, the U.S. v Microsoft antitrust case is examined. The case took more than six years between the government receiving a complaint and the end of the last court proceeding. During the investigations and court proceedings, Microsoft’s market share of browser usage rose from less than 20% to above 90%. After the conclusion of the case, its market share declined relatively consistently for many years. A structural breakpoint is found near the end of proceedings, consistent with the long-run efficacy of competition law

Energy Data Sharing and The Case of EV Smart Charging

This report examines the potential impacts of data sharing related to electric vehicle battery charging and electricity provision. The report arrives at a moment of regulatory ambiguity in the EU over the nature of data sharing that will be involved in this industry and whether there will be EU rules or national rules that ensure choice and prevent data monopolisation. Resolving the ambiguity is important due to the potentially decisive role that car batteries can ultimately play in storing variable renewable energy, like wind and solar, and returning this energy to the network at times of high demand. We maintain that the main regulatory challenges are represented by the policy choices related to interoperability and standardisation, in particular the option for a mandated rather than a facilitated API adoption, and the concerns about privacy and cybersecurity. Failure to require openness at an early stage is not likely to be counteracted by high customer demand for openness and could create lock-in for car customers to “mini” monopolies. Openness does not require imposition of one standard: openness only implies open access to each standard and information hel

Investigating How Speech And Animation Realism Influence The Perceived Personality Of Virtual Characters And Agents

The portrayed personality of virtual characters and agents is understood to influence how we perceive and engage with digital applications. Understanding how the features of speech and animation drive portrayed personality allows us to intentionally design characters to be more personalized and engaging. In this study, we use performance capture data of unscripted conversations from a variety of actors to explore the perceptual outcomes associated with the modalities of speech and motion. Specifically, we contrast full performance-driven characters to those portrayed by generated gestures and synthesized speech, analysing how the features of each influence portrayed personality according to the Big Five personality traits. We find that processing speech and motion can have mixed effects on such traits, with our results highlighting motion as the dominant modality for portraying extraversion and speech as dominant for communicating agreeableness and emotional stability. Our results can support the Extended Reality (XR) community in development of virtual characters, social agents and 3D User Interface (3DUI) agents portraying a range of targeted personalities

Human or Robot?: Investigating voice, appearance and gesture motion realism of conversational social agents

Research on creation of virtual humans enables increasing automatization of their behavior, including synthesis of verbal and nonverbal behavior. As the achievable realism of different aspects of agent design evolves asynchronously, it is important to understand if and how divergence in realism between behavioral channels can elicit negative user responses. Specifically, in this work, we investigate the question of whether autonomous virtual agents relying on synthetic text-to-speech voices should portray a corresponding level of realism in the non-verbal channels of motion and visual appearance, or if, alternatively, the best available realism of each channel should be used. In two perceptual studies, we assess how realism of voice, motion, and appearance influence the perceived match of speech and gesture motion, as well as the agent\u27s likability and human-likeness. Our results suggest that maximizing realism of voice and motion is preferable even when this leads to realism mismatches, but for visual appearance, lower realism may be preferable. (A video abstract can be found at https://youtu.be/arfZZ-hxD1Y.