Improve IO Research Quality
ENCORE research topics
ENCORE focuses on a number of research themes related to its core area of interest. Below follows a specification of these themes. ENCORE activities will typically be related to one of the other of these research topics.
Evaluation of competition and regulatory policies
Non neoclassical approaches to competition and welfare
Static versus dynamic efficiency
Measuring and interpreting level and intensity of competition
ENCORE organizes workshops, brown bag and brainstorms on a regular basis around the topics described above.
The annual ENCORE conference is organized around the ENCORE research topics in a general setting. The titles are deliberately broad, such as ‘Welfare and Competition’, Measuring Competition’, and ‘Creativity and Competition’.
Evaluation of competition and regulatory policies
There exists an urgent need among policy makers to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of competition and regulatory policies, both ex ante (i.e. predicting expected effectiveness before enacting a rule or regulation) and ex post (measuring observed effectiveness after the rule or regulation had been imposed).
- Feasibility and methods of ex ante evaluations
- Methods of ex post evaluations
- Development of cost benefit technique
- Policy commitment issues (consistency over time)
Non neoclassical approaches to competition and welfare
Recently new approaches have been challenging the neoclassical hypothesis about the positive effect of effective competition on society’s welfare. Also in practice introducing or increasing levels of competition does not always lead to obvious improvements in welfare levels. Non-canonical approaches to the relationship between competition and welfare might provide valuable theoretical and policy insights.
- Behavioral economics and non expected utility models
- Strategic Behavior
- Dynamic effects, innovation, high tech sectors, emerging markets
- Anti competitive issues
- Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
Static versus dynamic efficiency
This concerns not only the identification and measurement of static and dynamic efficiency but also the trade-off, which is unavoidable in quite a number of settings such as when:
- Regulating network industries
- Evaluating concentrations
- Considering anti trust issues in high-tech industries (such as Microsoft)
- Measuring the benefits of competition/regulation for consumers
- Analyzing patent and copyright law
Measuring and interpreting level and intensity of competition
Quite a number of problems in the regulation and competition policy area are concerned with evaluating the level and intensity of competition (or the lack of it). This broad research theme is concerned with how to measure and evaluate competition. More specific topics under this heading are:
- Methods for measuring or monitoring intensity of competition
- Linking the lack of competition to the specification of competition policies and vice versa measuring the effects of competition – and regulatory policies on the intensity of competition
- Find indicators which could reliably identify problem sectors
- Measurement of cartel stability
This is a catch all term to capture issues that are concerned with the methods of doing research or with methods of formulating policies. Specific topics under this label are:
- Usefulness of experimental economics for competition and regulation policies. Can new competition and regulation policies be tested in a controlled experimental laboratory environment? Can experiments be helpful with merger and acquisition cases and in other court cases?
- Social policy experiments: these consist of experiments settings for new policies which tried out for real over a representative sample of the population during a certain period. The effects are measured and are used to evaluate the value of the policies before a full fledge policy initiative is taken for the total population
- Structural Empirical Industrial Organization (SEIO): this is a recent empirical IO method that could be exploited in policy settings
- The “afwegingskader” (for netword and non-network industries) revisited
- Methods to evaluate competitions and regulatory policies such as leniency policies and sanctioning.
A perennial problem of competition and regulation policies and evaluations is the lack of appropriate data sources to do the analysis. ENCORE could possibly play a role in improving or at least alleviating this situation.
- Availability of individual business data, consumer data and specific market data
- Data requirements to measure effectiveness of regulation and competition policies
- Data requirements to measure intensity of competitioin and to monitor markets
- Privacy problems
Finally a list of practical policy problems:
- Price regulation: why does price regulation (has to) differ between sectors?
- Cross subsidization
- Institutional aspects of regulators and competition autorities
- Transparency
- Competition in specific markets: health and care, electricity, financial sector
