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This article surveys the recent experience of resolving access and interconnection issues in four quite different economies in East Asia: Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Australia. It suggests that there are some important questions that decide how interconnect issues are resolved in practice: clarity of the rules; national priorities; regulator activism; emphasis on negotiation by the parties and the overall pricing model. The overall finding is that the degree of regulatory intervention required to make interconnect regimes work has largely been underestimated.

The purpose of the paper is to explore the remaining aspects of telecommunications service that might require continued economic and technical regulation even after competition is present to the maximum extent feasible. The paper further explores the regulatory institutions and practices that will best accomplish this required regulation.

The paper evaluates the traditional choices between a sector‐specific regulator and a competition authority, as well as ex post and ex ante regulation. In addition, the paper evaluates less traditional methods of regulation including laws of general application, such as consumer protection laws, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, and self‐regulation. The characteristics of each of these means of regulation are identified, and, following a set of principles, the regulatory institutions and practices are matched to the areas of telecommunications requiring regulation.

The paper identifies five areas of telecommunications that will likely require continuing regulation and matches a regulatory institution or practice to each of the five areas of regulation. These five areas are retail regulation of local services in rural and remote areas with insufficient competition for forbearance, interconnection of competing networks and essential facilities, duty to serve (carrier of last resort and obligation to serve), subsidies for high‐cost or low‐income customers, and social regulation such as emergency service and message relay obligations.

Previous studies have not focused on the need for continuing regulation after competition develops to the maximum extent feasible. Also, studies typically consider the limited framework of a sector‐specific regulator or a competition authority and do not consider the other regulatory options or institutions available.

The Government of India established Competition Commission of India (CCI hereafter) through an act promulgated in 2002 to shift regulatory focus from curbing monopolies to promoting competition. The organization became fully functional in 2009 and gained recognition for its proactive stance when it slapped a penalty of Rs. 6400 crore on eleven cement companies for anticompetitive behavior. While CCI's proactive stance increased expectations of stakeholders and of the general public at large, it also became apparent that going forward the organization would need enormous resources and a clear identification of priority areas so as to emerge as an effective regulator. With this objective, the organization invited a team of professors from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India to help them with formulating a vision and mission statement. This case describes the process of creating a new vision and mission statement for a regulatory body.

This paper aims to analyze how the administrative structure of pension regulators affects regulatory capture or regulatory influence. It uses a historical institutionalist methodology to analyze regulatory capture.

The authors argue that the less complex allocation of regulatory authority in Ireland makes it more susceptible to regulatory capture or regulatory influence by the regulated industry than in the USA. Also, it is argued that stand-alone agencies are more susceptible to regulatory capture than are agencies that are embedded within larger departments of government. The authors present a five-step process in regulatory capture, with the later steps being used by the regulated industry if the earlier ones have failed.

The authors find that if the regulated industry has difficulty achieving regulatory capture through influencing the executive branch of government, it can also attempt to influence the legislative and judicial branches, as evidenced by a regulatory episode the USA has recently completed. Ireland has also recently completed reforms that may make regulatory capture more difficult. With a complex regulatory structure including overlapping authority as in the USA, when one agency has been strongly influenced by the regulated industry, another agency may take action to protect the public.

The paper presents international evidence as to the effect of the administrative structure of regulators on regulatory outcomes. It tests a hypothesis that the more complex, overlapping allocation of regulatory authority in the USA makes it less susceptible to regulatory capture.

Academic library consortia activity has become an integral part of academic libraries’ operations. Consortia have come to assert considerable bargaining power over publishers and have provided libraries with considerable economic advantage. They interact with publishers both as consumers of publishers’ products, with much stronger bargaining power than individual libraries hold, and, increasingly, as rival publishers themselves. Are consortia changing the relationship between academic libraries and publishers? Is the role of academic library consortia placing academic libraries in a position that should and will attract the attention of competition policy regulators? Competition policy prohibits buying and selling cartels that can negatively impact the free market on which the Canadian economic system, like other Western economies, depends. Competition policy as part of economic policy is, however, only relevant where we are concerned with aspects of the market economy. Traditionally, public goods for the greater social and cultural benefit of society are not considered part of the market economic system. If the activities of academic library consortia are part of that public good perspective, competition policy may not be a relevant concern. Using evidence gained from in-depth interviews from a national sample of university librarians and from interviews with the relevant federal government policy makers, this research establishes whether library consortia are viewed as participating in the market economy of Canada or not. Are consortia viewed by librarians and government as serving a public good role of providing information for a greater social and cultural benefit or are they seen from a market-economic perspective of changing power relations with publishers? Findings show government has little in-depth understanding of academic library consortia activity, but would most likely consider such activity predominantly from a market economic perspective. University librarians view consortia from a public good perspective but also as having an important future role in library operations and in changing the existing scholarly publishing paradigm. One-third of librarian respondents felt that future consortia could compete with publishers by becoming publishers and through initiatives such as open source institutional repositories. Librarians also felt that consortia have had a positive effect on librarians’ professional roles through the facilitation of knowledge building and collaboration opportunities outside of the home institution.

This paper aims to explain and demonstrate how business model frameworks can be used to understand market developments and to assess the role of policy in (multi‐sided) ICT markets.

The research approach in the paper builds on integrated business model frameworks, which cover (much) more than the financial decisions of one single firm. A case study approach is implemented and tested in two studies on digital content platforms.

Relevant policy instruments are identified and explored. To some extent, the findings are complementary or contradictory to the findings of existing studies on digital content platforms. The paper includes policy recommendations related to mobile and fixed content platforms.

Limitations of the study are due to the explorative and qualitative approach, and are to be complemented by other approaches. Policy makers and researchers can use the approach to analyse digital content platform developments and the impact of policy. Stakeholders in innovation processes can use the approach to address business models as well as policy issues for emerging platforms and services.

The use of business model analysis in the context of policy analysis is a relatively new approach that is inspired by research findings on information communication technology (ICT) platforms and multi‐sided networks, progress in business model studies, challenges in the policy mix for ICT, and the importance of case study methods for impact assessment.

With the surge in public procurement, especially in developing countries, ensuring fair competition in procurement has assumed paramount importance. Academic endeavors in the domain of competition issues have often lacked the views of field-level functionaries. This study aims to involve a large number of expert practitioners in India to identify the significant contemporary competition risks in public procurement from the procurer and supplier sides and develop a model depicting the hierarchy of competition-restrictive actions (CRAs) in procurement based on their mutual interactions.

The significant CRAs along the procurement cycle are identified through literature survey, interactive workshops and expert interviews. A questionnaire survey covering 143 respondents from 12 public organizations is used to evaluate their impact. Considering the complex causal interactions involved, interpretive structural modeling followed by MICMAC (Iimpact matrix cross-reference multiplication applied to a classification analysis is used to develop a hierarchical model of competition risks in procurement.

Tailor-made contracts, splitting of a project below competition thresholds, restrictive selection criteria and awarding the contract on nomination emerge as CRAs with the highest driving power. Horizontal collusion among vendors strongly depends on practices followed in the procuring organization.

The survey data and the experts’ opinions emanate from practitioners in India, which is a limitation. However, with necessary contextual calibrations, the study is of high functional utility to policymakers and practitioners.

The research facilitates a comprehensive understanding to procurement managers/policymakers of the CRAs along the procurement cycle and their interdependencies. It offers valuable insights for improving competition, which is foundational for optimal procurement outcomes.

The study enriches the public procurement domain knowledge by identifying and assessing the significant contemporary CRAs, examining their mutual interactions and developing an interpretive structural model. Although contributing to the body of knowledge, the study is unique in being grounded in field realities.

Academic research has intensively analyzed the relationship between market concentration or market power and banking stability but provides ambiguous results, which are summarized under the concentration-stability/fragility view. We provide empirical evidence that the mixed results are due to the difficulty of identifying reliable variables to measure concentration and market power.

Using data from 3,943 banks operating in the European Union (EU)-15 between 2013 and 2020, we employ linear regression models on panel data. Banking market concentration is measured by the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI), and market power is estimated by the product-specific Lerner Indices for the loan and deposit market, respectively.

Our analysis reveals a significantly stability-decreasing impact of market concentration (HHI) and a significantly stability-increasing effect of market power (Lerner Indices). In addition, we provide evidence for a weak (or even absent) empirical relationship between the (non)structural measures, challenging the validity of the structure-conduct-performance (SCP) paradigm. Our baseline findings remain robust, especially when controlling for a likely reverse causality.

Our results suggest that the HHI may reflect other factors beyond market power that influence banking stability. Thus, banking supervisors and competition authorities should investigate market concentration and market power simultaneously while considering their joint impact on banking stability.

The purpose of this paper is to report on research that examined the potential affects of academic library consortia activity on the scholarly publishing cycle.

Semi‐structured interviews of 30 university librarians from across Canada and representatives from six federal government agencies involved in university funding, copyright and competition policy, were used to examine consortia activity in the broad context of the scholarly publishing cycle from the competing perspectives of the market economy and the public good. The principles of competition and copyright were used to define the theoretical premise of the research.

University librarians primarily see consortia activity as supporting academic libraries' public good role of providing access to information as equitably and as barrier‐free as possible. They saw consortia as more than just buying clubs, but also as a means for libraries to share resources and expertise. Federal government agency representatives saw consortia activity firmly anchored in the market economy, levelling the playing field between libraries and publishers, and providing libraries opportunities to leverage their budgets.

This research was unique to the Canadian situation of federal funding of universities and only a sampling of university librarians was feasible.

The results show a need to educate librarians and government funding bodies and policy makers as to the goals and outcomes of consortia activity.

At the time of the defence of the thesis this work had not been done before.