MARKET, ECONOMICS AND REGULATION

The course aims at studying the economic and legal aspects of the activity of regulation and protection of competition in those sectors that, for their peculiarities, are highly regulated, mainly because of the existence of information asymmetries and/or externalities. ​In-class discussions of case studies concerning the regulatory policies for public utilities and the analysis of the Antitrrust activity, in Italy and abroad, will allow students to develop their critical and autonomous opinions and to apply the theoretical knowledge acquired during the course. At the end of the course the student will ahve to demonstrate the awareness of the main applied models of Industrial Economics and of those tools of the economic analysis that are required to evaluate critically the problems of economic regulation and the policies for the protection of competition.

Economic regulation and its alternatives. The notion of natural monopoly. The concepts of competition for the market and in the market. The regulation of natural monopoly in presence of information asymmetries. Network services: peculiarities, access problems and forms of regulations. The regulation of public utilities. The US, European and Italian Antitrust laws. The relevant market: definition and delimitation. Cartels and collusions: forms, causes, standards of proof and enforcement activity. Mergers and acquisitions: forms, economic effects and assessment by the European Commission. Abuse of dominant position: predatory pricing, economic theories and imputation tests.

1) Cervigni G. e D’Antoni M., Monopolio naturale, concorrenza e regolamentazione, Carocci, 2001: chapters I (with the exception of subparagraphs 1.3.2 and 1.3.4); II (with the exception of paragraph 2.3 and subparagraphs 2.3.1, 2.4.3, 2.5.3 and appendix); III (up to p. 163); V (only paragraphs 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3).

2) Marzi G., Prosperetti L. e Putzu E., La regolazione dei servizi infrastrutturali, il Mulino, 2001: chapter VI. The book is out of order, at the moment. However, a copy of it is available by the professor.

3) Reading on the regulation of a specific public utility sector (to be indicated)

4) Motta M. e Polo M., Antitrust. Economia e politica della concorrenza, Il Mulino, 2005. chapters: I, III (with the exception of paragraph 3.2), IV (with the exception of paragraphs 3.4, 3.5 and 5), V (with the exception of paragraph 2.4), VII (only paragraphs 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 (with the exception pof subparagraph 2.3.2), 2.4, 2.5, 3.1 and 3.2), VIII (only paragraphs 2, 3 and 7).

5) Motta M., On cartel deterrence and fines in the European Union, European Competition Law Review 2008, v. 29, n. 4, pp. 209-220

6) Pedilla A.J., “Efficiencies in Horizontal Mergers: Williamson Revisited”, In: Issues in Competition Law and Policy, Wayne Dale Collins, ed., American Bar Association Press, 2005 August 2005, available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=812989

7) Motta M., The European Commission’s guidance communication on article 82, European Competition Law Review 2009, v. 30, n. 12, p. 593-599 or, alternatively, Kellerbauer M., The Commission’s new enforcement priorities in applying Article 82 EC to dominant companies’ exclusionary conduct : a shift towards a more economic approach?, European Competition Law Review 2010, v. 31, n. 5, pp. 175-186