Ateneo - UPO

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, require to be 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 on the isuue and to apply practically the theoretical framework acquired during the course.

Fabrizio Dalle Nogare, Regolazione e mercato delle Comunicazioni elettroniche. La storia, la governance delle regole e il nuovo Codice europeo, febbraio 2019, Giappichelli.

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

Other useful readings:

- Buccirossi, Paolo. (2008) Handbook of antitrust economics. The MIT Press.

- Church, Jeffrey R., and Roger Ware. (2000) Industrial organization: a strategic approach. Homewood, IL.: Irwin McGraw Hill.

- Cretì, A., & Fontini, F. (2019). Economics of Electricity: Markets, Competition and Rules. Cambridge University Press.

- Davis, P., & Garcés, E. (2009). Quantitative techniques for competition and antitrust analysis. Princeton University Press.

- Viscusi, W. Kip, Joseph E. Harrington Jr, and David EM Sappington. (2018) Economics of regulation and antitrust. MIT press, 2018.

At the end of the economics part of the course, students will be able to understand the reasons behind firms' choices in both strategic and nonstrategic markets, to improve issues for the understanding of the complexity of the relationships within firms as well as within and between firms and markets. Improving the knowledge of the tools in economic theory will enable students to carry out autonomous research being able to strictly analyse economic events from a new perspective.

There are not recommended propaedeutic exams. To follow the economics course proficiently, it is necessary to have the basic knowledge regarding the mathematical relationships between variables, as well as the study of microeconomic and macroeconomic issues learned during the firt-year Economics course

The course includes lectures, carried out with the support of slides and supplementary teaching material that is made available to students through the Moodle platform. There will also be moments of classroom discussion on case studies. Should teaching be carried out in mixed mode or remotely, it may be necessary to introduce changes with respect to previous statements, in line with the programme planned and outlined in the syllabus.

The test will be taken at the end of the course and will consist in open-ended questions, multiple-choice questions (to be motivated) and/or tru/false questions (to be motivated). The format of the test will be discussed with students at the beginning of the course.

The course provides students with an intuitive and accessible discussion, but rigorous in approach, of the theoretical foundations of public intervention in markets with asymmetric information and externalities.The initial part of the course are referred to the fundamental theorems of welfare economics, the main cases of market failure, the analysis of the efficiency as well as a critical reading of the social welfare function and Arrow's theorem.The general part of the course is divided into regulation and competition. Lessons related to the regulation will include: natural monopoly (welfare analysis of static and dynamic) economies and diseconomies (of scale, density and diversity) and network externalities. Cost reasons and objectives of regulation. Mechanisms of competition for the market and pricing are also covered in the course.The course also deals with the commons good and the citizens’ participation in public services focusing on the co-production.The final part of the course focuses on the analysis of the sectors characterized by natural monopoly segments (energy, transport, telecommunications and water utilities) with examples of the recent Italian and European backgrounds. The program is the same for students attending and not attending.

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, require to be 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 on the isuue and to apply practically the theoretical framework acquired during the course. At the end of the course the student will have 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.