IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/6861.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Keeping Both Eyes Wide Open: The Life of a Competition Authority Among Sectoral Regulators

Author

Listed:
  • Barros, Pedro
  • Nilssen, Tore
  • Hoernig, Steffen

Abstract

Competition authorities must pay attention to many industries simultaneously. Sectoral regulators concentrate on their own industry. Often both types of authority may intervene in specific industries and there is an overlap of jurisdictions. We show how a competition authority?s resource allocation is affected by its relationships with sectoral regulators and their biases. If agencies collaborate (compete), the competition authority spends more effort on the industry with the more (less) consumer-biased sectoral regulator. The competition authority spends budget increases on the industry whose regulator reacts less to more effort. The socially optimal budget corrects for distortions due to regulatory bias, but only downwards.

Suggested Citation

  • Barros, Pedro & Nilssen, Tore & Hoernig, Steffen, 2008. "Keeping Both Eyes Wide Open: The Life of a Competition Authority Among Sectoral Regulators," CEPR Discussion Papers 6861, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6861
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP6861
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jeremy I. Bulow & John Geanakoplos & Paul D. Klemperer, 1983. "Multimarket Oligopoly," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 674, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    2. George J. Stigler, 1971. "The Theory of Economic Regulation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 2(1), pages 3-21, Spring.
    3. David Martimort, 1999. "The Life Cycle of Regulatory Agencies: Dynamic Capture and Transaction Costs," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(4), pages 929-947.
    4. Guy Holburn & Richard Bergh, 2006. "Consumer capture of regulatory institutions: The creation of public utility consumer advocates in the United States," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 126(1), pages 45-73, January.
    5. Thomas P. Gehrig, 2004. "Organizational Form and Information Acquisition," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 160(1), pages 39-51, March.
    6. Pedro P. Barros & Steffen H. Hoernig, 2018. "Sectoral Regulators and the Competition Authority: Which Relationship is Best?," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 52(3), pages 451-472, May.
    7. Joseph Farrell & Michael Katz, 2006. "The Economics of Welfare Standards in Antitrust," CPI Journal, Competition Policy International, vol. 2.
    8. Martimort, David, 1999. "Renegotiation Design with Multiple Regulators," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 261-293, October.
    9. Sah, Raaj Kumar & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1985. "Human Fallibility and Economic Organization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(2), pages 292-297, May.
    10. Martimort, David, 1996. "The multiprincipal nature of government," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-5), pages 673-685, April.
    11. Martin F. Grace & Richard D. Phillips, 2007. "The Allocation of Governmental Regulatory Authority: Federalism and the Case of Insurance Regulation," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 74(1), pages 207-238, March.
    12. Seabright,Paul & von Hagen,Jürgen (ed.), 2007. "The Economic Regulation of Broadcasting Markets," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521874052.
    13. Seabright,Paul & von Hagen,Jürgen (ed.), 2007. "The Economic Regulation of Broadcasting Markets," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521696340.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pedro P. Barros & Steffen H. Hoernig, 2018. "Sectoral Regulators and the Competition Authority: Which Relationship is Best?," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 52(3), pages 451-472, May.
    2. Antonio Estache & L. Wren-Lewis, 2008. "Towards a Theory of Regulation for Developing Countries: Following Laffont's Lead," Working Papers ECARES 2008_018, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    3. Jordi Perdiguero & Joan Ramon Borrell, 2019. "Driving competition in local markets with near-perfect substitutes: an application on the Spanish retail gasoline market," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 345-364, July.
    4. Weeds, Helen, 2012. "Superstars and the long tail: The impact of technology on market structure in media industries," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 60-68.
    5. Julia Rothbauer & Gernot Sieg, 2013. "Public Service Broadcasting of Sport, Shows, and News to Mitigate Rational Ignorance," Journal of Media Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(1), pages 21-40, March.
    6. Julia Rothbauer & Gernot Sieg, 2013. "Are commercial ceilings adequate for the regulation of commercial overload on free-to-air TV channels?," Working Papers 19, Institute of Transport Economics, University of Muenster, revised May 2014.
    7. Marco Antonielli & Lapo Filistrucchi, 2011. "Collusion and the political differentiation of newspapers," Working Papers 11-26, NET Institute, revised Nov 2011.
    8. Emmanuelle Auriol & Antonio Estache & Liam Wren-Lewis, 2018. "Can Supranational Infrastructure Regulation Compensate for National Institutional Weaknesses?," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 69(6), pages 913-936.
    9. Filistrucchi, L. & Gerardin, D. & van Damme, E.E.C. & Keunen, S. & Klein, T.J. & Michielsen, T.O. & Wileur, J., 2010. "Mergers in Two-Sided Markets - A Report to the NMa," Other publications TiSEM f901d1fe-8878-444e-a685-8, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    10. Kerkhof, Anna & Münster, Johannes, 2015. "Quantity restrictions on advertising, commercial media bias, and welfare," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 124-141.
    11. Magnus Söderberg & Makoto Tanaka, 2012. "Spatial price homogeneity as a mechanism to reduce the threat of regulatory intervention in locally monopolistic sectors," Working Papers hal-00659458, HAL.
    12. Paul Madden & Mario Pezzino, 2013. "Sports League Quality, Broadcaster TV Rights Bids and Wholesale Regulation of Sports Channels," Economics Discussion Paper Series 1304, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    13. Alessandro De Chiara & Marco A. Schwarz, 2020. "A Dynamic Theory of Regulatory Capture," Working Papers 2020-12, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    14. Estache, Antonio & Martimort, David, 1999. "Politics, transaction costs, and the design of regulatory institutions," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2073, The World Bank.
    15. Peitz, Martin & Valletti, Tommaso M., 2008. "Content and advertising in the media: Pay-tv versus free-to-air," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 949-965, July.
    16. Simon P. Anderson & Joshua S. Gans, 2011. "Platform Siphoning: Ad-Avoidance and Media Content," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 1-34, November.
    17. Miguel González-Maestre & Francisco Martínez-Sánchez, 2015. "Quality choice and advertising regulation in broadcasting markets," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 114(2), pages 107-126, March.
    18. G. P. Manish & Colin O’Reilly, 2019. "Banking regulation, regulatory capture and inequality," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 180(1), pages 145-164, July.
    19. Hongqi Ma & Guangjun Shen, 2021. "Do new mayors bring fresh air? Some evidence of regulatory capture in China," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 25(4), pages 227-249, December.
    20. Torben Stühmeier, 2019. "Media market concentration and pluralism," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 247-259, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Competition authority; Regulatory bias; Sectoral regulators;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • L40 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - General
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6861. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.