Improve IO research quality

This is a catch-all topic to capture issues that aim at increasing the quality of research on industrial organization and on competition and regulation in the Netherlands. Specific proposals under this heading are:

 

1. Sector data availability: CBS (Netherlands Central Statistical Office) has individual firm data available for a number of sectors and years which could be applied much more in competition and regulation research. ENCORE will endeavour to improve the availability and accessibility of these individual firm data.

2. Structural Empirical Industrial Organization (SEIO): this is a recent empirical IO method that could be used in policy settings . ENCORE will evaluate the usefulness of this approach and, if appropriate, encourage its use.

3. Policy experiments: these consists of experiment settings for new policies which are tried out for a certain period or with a certain population. Data on results will be gathered and then used to evaluate the experiments in a real options type of framework before a full-fledged policy initiative is taken. IO researchers could provide help in the design, execution and evaluation of these experiments.

4. Experimental design: new policies and competition and regulation hypotheses can be tested in a controlled experimental environment. The Netherlands has experimental laboratories at the University of Tilburg and the University of Amsterdam. These settings could be further utilized to promote a better design of competition and regulation policies.