Monopoly

Monopoly pricing per se, that is without need of proof of anti-competitive conduct or intent, is regulated very differently on both sides of the Atlantic, at least in theory. U.S. antitrust law sets a straightforward rule: monopoly pricing, as such, is not regulated. In contrast, under EC law excessive pricing is considered an abuse of dominance and is punishable by fine and subject to a prohibitory order. These approaches fit the divide between the regulation of exclusionary and exploitative conduct: whereas exclusionary conduct is an offense against antitrust law on both sides of the Atlantic, exploitative conduct generally only breaches EU law.

This article analyzes these regulatory approaches, their historical and theoretical roots, as well as the differences that exist in practice between the two systems. As will be shown, the divergent legal rules reflect different ideological goals and different assumptions about how markets operate. The U.S. views the unregulated economy as essentially competitive, if the creation of artificial barriers is prohibited. This approach places significant emphasis on the workings of the market and considers monopoly created by means other than artificial barriers to be relatively unimportant. It also reflects the limited role granted to government in regulating markets directly and the social, moral and political values attributed to the process of competition. EC law reflects a lesser belief in the ability of market forces to erode monopoly and a stronger belief in the ability of a regulator to intervene efficiently in setting the business parameters of firms operating in the market. It also reflects a stronger emphasis on distributional justice.

The importance of the analysis lies beyond antitrust intervention in monopoly pricing, as it opens a window to much broader themes which underlie the competition policies of both jurisdictions and enables us to exemplify and contrast the foundations of both regulatory systems. The regulation of excessive pricing encapsulates issues such as the goals and underpinning of EC and U.S. antitrust systems; the equilibrium point which was adopted to balance between the forces of Darwinian capitalism and those of social justice; the role of government regulation; the balance between practical problems and theoretical principles; and the assumptions regarding the relative administrability of various types of regulation. Monopoly pricing regulation is thus, in many ways, a microcosm of competition policy.

In this paper we draw crucial parallels between the concepts of compatibility and networks and the more traditional concepts of complementarity and vertical relationships. We also develop the important distinctions between 'two-way networks' and 'one-way networks'. We then apply our framework to a number of current antitrust issues.

Frank A. Fetter is often classified as an American representative of the Austrian school, yet surprisingly, there is practically no published record of his views of the Austrians or theirs of him, and there is no indication that he ever seriously interacted with them after the First World War. However, Fetter enjoyed many personal and professional relationships with the Austrians, and they shared a reciprocal influence on each other's ideas that deeply influenced their respective research programs. This paper draws on unpublished archival records to explore Fetter's unique place in the history of economics, in particular, his positive and negative interactions with the leading individuals and institutions of the Austrian school. Their half-century of influence sheds light on Fetter and his role in American economics, but also brings to light a wide range of information about the lives, works, and personal relations of the Austrians that have not been included in their biographies or institutional histories.

In this article, I analyse changes in the power relationship between lead firms, manufacturers and workers by examining a strike that took place in South China in 2014 among workers at the Taiwanese footwear giant, Yue Yuen. In the process, I demonstrate that there is a link between increased labour costs, capital consolidation and greater value capture at the bottom of the global supply chain. I argue that footwear value chains are seeing a falling level of monopsony power and the emergence of enormous oligopolistic suppliers, which are transforming the power imbalances of global supply chains towards a more mutually dependent ‘buyer–producer symbiosis’. The Yue Yuen strike shows a maturing industrial working class, facing pressures on social reproduction in China, adapting its bargaining strategies vis-à-vis the developmental state. Influxes of profit raise the ceiling for what can be demanded of employers, stimulating those same employers to pursue more aggressive means of holding onto their profits. The example of the Yue Yuen strike is an indicator of what are fundamental changes in the production process, dynamics within the value chain, and power and agency of workers in labour-intensive production. The strike demonstrates that consolidation is playing a decisive role in shaping the power relationship between domestic manufacturers and transnational brands, which, in turn, is directly affecting the bargaining power of workers.

Increasingly, governments are experimenting with ways to provide public goods by involving the private sector in the planning, financing, building and operating of a range of services, facilities, infrastructure, etc. In the geographical literature on neoliberalism this entanglement of the state and markets has been loosely conceptualized as a process of marketization. This concept describes the insertion of markets or market forces into the state and public sector. In this paper we unpack this concept by highlighting the need to think about a range of marketization processes at play across a range of geographies.

In this paper I draw on a body of scholarship that focuses on how a central feature of capitalist urbanization is the willingness of firms to participate in a form of rent-seeking that exploits geographical differences. I then extend this analysis to the cultural economy. I use as my case study Austin, Texas, which since 1991 has branded itself the “Live Music Capital of the World.” The existing literature on Austin’s urban entrepreneurial strategy, reflecting the dominant trends in urban and economic geography, focuses on how this branding campaign cultivated and exploited the geographical particularities of the city’s cultural infrastructure. However, I contend that the changes brought about within the music industry influenced the success of this effort. In particular, I argue that the effectiveness of this branding effort is related to the changing value of live music within the music industry and especially the elevated position of music promoters (those firms that rely on live music as an essential part of their business). As this paper shows, the value of the city’s branding efforts is related to the industrial success of two of the music industry’s mid-sized promotional firms, SXSW Inc. and C3 Presents. These two Austin-based firms trade on its live-music brand but also, perhaps unwittingly,  receive an extra-economic benefit that amplifies this reputation. In particular, I will focus on how a special music event, SXSW, and a music festival, Austin City Limits, help reinforce the image that has been enhanced by the city’s branding efforts.

From the Publisher:

Big Data and Big Analytics are a big deal today. Big Data is playing a pivotal role in many companies' strategic decision-making. Companies are striving to acquire a 'data advantage' over rivals. Data-driven mergers are increasing. These data-driven business strategies and mergers raise significant implications for privacy, consumer protection and competition law. At the same time, European and United States' competition authorities are beginning to consider the implications of a data-driven economy on competition policy. In 2015, the European Commission launched a competition inquiry into the e-commerce sector and issued a statement of objections in its Google investigation. The implications of Big Data on competition policy will likely be a part of the mix.

Big Data and Competition Policy is the first work to offer a detailed description of the important new issue of Big Data and explains how it relates to competition laws and policy, both in the EU and US. The book helps bring the reader quickly up to speed on what is Big Data, its competitive implications, the competition authorities' approach to data-driven mergers and business strategies, and their current approach's strengths and weaknesses.

Written by two recognized leading experts in competition law, this accessible work offers practical guidance and theoretical discussion of the potential benefits (including data-driven efficiencies) and concerns for the practitioner, policy maker, and academic alike.

First chapter is attached.

High-frequency trading (HFT) is a financial innovation that focuses on order flow and relies on quickly evolving information and communication technology. The innovation is successful, and HFT is highly and consistently profitable. However, the Flash Crash on 6 May 2010 exposed the unfamiliar side of HFT, thus illuminating the emergent need to unveil the negative impact that HFT has on other investors and the market. This paper examines data regarding quote-stuffing, spoofing, and market making provided by high-frequency (HF) traders, based on the increasing empirical literature. It first defines order-based manipulation (OBM) as the framework under which quote-stuffing, spoofing, and HF market making find common ground. It then provides details regarding how OBM is displayed in the three manipulation tactics. In essence, they all seek and exercise monopoly power in trading albeit through different ways of achieving it. The shared purpose is to gain monopolistic profit. The essence and common purpose explain why HF traders are not net liquidity providers, contrary to some proponents’ conclusions. Rather, this paper points out the three consequences that HF traders have brought to the market, i.e. increased volatility, increased frequency of unfairness, and instability potential. Recent regulatory improvement and completed prosecutions against manipulative HFT strategies justify the analysis.

Different economic measures afford different ways of seeing processes of financialisation. In the prototypical case of the US economy, the most compelling evidence of post-1970s financialisation is found in corporate profits measures. This much has been clear for at least a decade. What remains much less clear, however, is the explanation for the long-term maintenance and amplification of extreme financial-sector profitability that financialisation in the United States has and continues to entail. With a specific focus on banking, this article turns to post-Marxian scholarship on profit rate trends to explain this phenomenon. It argues that limited and declining levels of competition within the US banking sector during recent decades—rooted in high levels of industry concentration, collusive behaviour, and substantial entry barriers—have contributed to sustaining and boosting abnormal sectoral profitability. In doing so, the article theorises financialisation in the United States explicitly in terms of monopoly profit.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to uncover the essence of insider trading, explain why insider trading law is ineffective and provide implications of the effectiveness of the law.

Design/methodology/approach
This conceptual paper offers three propositions. The first two are based on a literature review of 62 articles in empirical research to develop an understanding of the essence of insider trading and identify the areas in which insider trading is ineffective. This analysis is used in the third proposition to provide a direction in suggesting effective measures to improve insider trading law.

Findings
The essence of insider trading is that corporate insiders exercise informational monopoly power over their trades. This understanding explains why insider trading law is ineffective because it has not taken away the monopoly power that corporate insiders possess and exercise. This understanding also leads to three antitrust suggestions aimed at improving insider trading law.

Practical implications
The findings may provide assistance to the lawmakers and regulators to make insider trading law more effective and enforcement more simplified.

Originality/value
This paper is of value to other researchers attempting to understand the essence of insider trading and to policymakers concerned about the existence of monopolistic behavior in the equity market and income inequality due to corporate insiders’ trading profit.

Keywords:
Insider trading, Antitrust, Corporate insiders, Earnings manipulation, Informational monopoly power, Insider trading law

The difference between bank-based and market-based financial systems is a longstanding and influential conceptual staple of the interdisciplinary literature on finance. This dualistic model has been subjected to wide-ranging critiques over the past decade. Yet, while those critiques productively problematize the relationship between banks and markets presumed by the model, they fail to address the underlying distinction between banks and markets that is also presumed by the model. This article questions that distinction. It argues that financial markets are best understood not as places or platforms where banks and other financial actors come to interact – and thus as essentially separate from banks – but, instead, as, in large part, their interaction; as constituted by it. The article further argues for the political as well as scholarly importance of reconfiguring our ideas of what financial markets are. The idea of markets as separate , reified phenomena not only underpins the scholarly model of bank-and market-based financial systems – it does political work in the wider world, with the appeal to financial markets or, more nebulously , ''the market " to rationalize and justify political decision-making having become a commonplace of contemporary public policy discourse.

In this paper, the origins of some of Joseph Alois Schumpeter's views are traced back to Rudolf Hilferding's Finance Capital, regarding the Schumpeterian hypothesis and the separation of roles between capitalists, entrepreneurs and managers. After a careful examination of Hilferding's writings, the conclusion may be drawn that Schumpeter expresses ideas very similar to Hilferding's, and seems to have been influenced by his conceptualisation of a 'latest phase' of capitalism, shaped by the structure of the 'monopolistic enterprise'. Hilferding's approach is understood in this paper as a major revision of Marx's conceptual understanding of the capitalist mode of production and, therefore, as a 'paradigm shift' within Marxian economic theory.

To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2017. Rescaling the local: Multi-academy trusts, private monopoly and statecraft in England. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 49 (2), 171-185

For the past six years successive UK governments in England have introduced reforms intended to usher in less aggregated, top-down, bureaucratically overloaded models of service delivery as well as secure conditions for greater school autonomy.  Yet the ‘hollowing out’ of local government has not resulted in less bureaucracy on the ground or less regulation from above, nor has it diminished hierarchy as an organising principle of education governance.  In some cases, monopolies and monopolistic practices dominated by powerful bureaucracies and professional groups persist, albeit realised through the involvement of new actors and organisations from business and philanthropy.  In this paper I adopt a governmentality perspective to explore the political significance of large multi-academy trusts (MATs) – private sponsors contracted by central government to run publicly funded schools – to the generation of new scalar hierarchies and accountability infrastructures that assist in bringing the gaze of government to bear upon the actions of schools that are otherwise less visible under local government management.  On this account, it is argued, MATs are integral to statecraft and the invention and assemblage of particular apparatuses for intervening upon specific organisations, spaces and peoples.

In EU and the US, competition law regulates the practices of large firms so as to protect consumer welfare and
economic efficiency. In Asia, many countries such as China and Vietnam are shifting to market economy; small
firms expand and grow to become large scale corporations. Competition law is gaining importance in these
countries. This paper firstly provides an overview on the role of the competition law in protecting consumer
efficiency and consumer welfare. Afterwards, content analysis on the previous journal articles about Asia’s
countries competition law, such as China, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, India will be conducted. Lastly, a case
study on supermarket in Hong Kong shows the role of competition law.

We extend the results of our article, "Access and Interconnection Pricing? How Efficient Is the "Efficient Component Pricing Rule?," Antitrust Bulletin (1995). In the presence of a monopolized essential input, we show that application of the Efficient component Pricing Rule ("ECPR") in pricing this input to downstream competitors perpetuates monopoly distortions and high prices of final goods services. We show these results for various demand conditions, including conditions that are accepted to hold in the telecommunications sector. We also respond to various criticisms raised by A. Larson in "The Efficiency of the Efficient-Component-Pricing Rule: A Comment," Antitrust Bulletin, (this issue) (1998).

This chapter examines the justifications, history, and practice of regulation in the US telecommunications sector. We examine the impact of technological and regulatory change on market structure and business strategy. Among others, we discuss the emergence and decline of the telecom bubble, the impact on pricing of digitization and the emergence of Internet telephony (VOIP). We also examine the impact of the 1996 Telecommunications Act on market structure and strategy in conjunction with the history of regulation and antitrust intervention in the telecommunications sector. After discussing the impact of wireless technologies, we conclude by venturing into some short term predictions. We express concern about the derailment of the implementation of the 1996 Act by the aggressive legal tactics of the entrenched monopolists (the local exchange carriers), and we point to the real danger that the intent of Congress in passing the 1996 Act to promote competition in telecommunications will never be realized in local telecommunications in the fashion that the 1996 prescribed. The decision of AT&T to stop marketing both long distance and local services to residential customers is a direct result of the derailing of the 1996 Act that has allowed the local service monopolists (i) to enter long distance while the local market was still monopolized; and (ii) to leverage their monopoly power in the local market to the long distance market. We also discuss the wave of mergers in the Telecommunications and cable industries, the telecom meltdown of 2000-2003, and issues that arose from the triennial review by the FCC of implementation of the 1996 Act.

A recent series of academic studies, think-tank reports, and news articles shows widespread attention to
rising industrial concentration and market power in the U.S. economy. In this paper, we focus on concentration in
the U.S. nonfinancial corporate sector to make three contributions to this literature. First, we trace the theoretical
origins of the debate on industrial concentration, and show that there is a certain degree of ambiguity surrounding
the expected consequences of concentration and monopolization for nonfinancial firms. Second, we use industrylevel
concentration data to describe recent trends in average concentration. We show that, while concentration
increases across the majority of U.S. industries after the late 1990s, the retail and information-services sectors are
particularly key for understanding recent trends in average industrial concentration. Third, we link our industry-level
analysis with firm-level data to describe the relationship between industrial concentration and nonfinancial
corporations’ profitability, markups, and investment. Consistent with the ambiguities in the theoretical literature, we
find that these relationships are not uniform: while some highly-concentrated industries confirm standard
expectations with high markups, high profitability, and low investment rates, other highly-concentrated industries
earn lower-than-average markups and profits, suggesting that – in some industries – increased concentration and
intensified competition may go hand in hand.

ÖZ

Ücretli emeğin olduğu her dönemde grevlere rastlamak mümkündür. İşçi ve işveren arasındaki ilişkinin dengeli seviyede ilerleyebilmesi için, işçiler grev silahını geçmişten günümüze kullanmıştır. 19. yüzyılda Osmanlı ekonomisinde görülen sanayileşme hareketleri ile birlikte grevlerin de arttığını görülmektedir. Özellikle tütün sektöründeki sanayileşme ile birlikte ortaya çıkan tütün işçilerinin grevleri, Osmanlı emek tarihinde önemli bir konumdadır. Tütün tekelini elinde bulunduran Reji Şirketi'nin işçilerine sunmuş olduğu çalışma koşulları, ücretler ve mesai saatlerini içeren ağır düzenlemelerine karşı, işçiler zaman zaman grevlere giderek, daha iyi çalışma şartları için direnmişlerdir. Şirketin, İstanbul'daki fabrikası olan, Cibali Tütün Fabrikası işçilerinin grevleri genellikle tepkisel karakterli olmuş ve grev sebepleri ise sadece ekonomik kaynaklı değil, sosyal sebeplerde olmuştur. Cibali Reji işçisi zihniyetinde, grevler süresince oluşan " işçi sınıfı bilinci " dikkat çekmektedir. Bu bilinç, yapılan grevlerle birlikte gelişmiş ve sosyalizm düşüncesi böylece Osmanlı işçileri arasında yaygınlık kazanmışsa da, söz konusu gelişmeleri devlet izleyerek, önlem almış ve bu düşüncenin İstanbul'da gelişimi yaygınlık kazanmamıştır.

I study the effect of sunk entry-costs on potential competition in a multi-market framework, where potential entrants have different home market profits. Although sunk-entry-costs are supposed to increase entry barriers, my experimental results suggest that firms view entry costs differently depending on their home market profits. I find that subjects are reluctant to enter, and compete in another market if they are already earning monopoly rents. Subjects instead, collude tacitly and earn monopoly rents in home markets, thereby weakening the effect of potential competition. In contrast, subjects who earn small secure returns in their home markets aggressively enter the contestable market whenever there are scopes for earning net profits. The threat of entry and the effects of potential competition are strong in the latter situation, forcing the monopoly incumbents to lower prices to limit-pricing levels.

We discuss the formation of technical standards platforms in industries with network externalities where firms are free to choose their degree of technical compatibility with competitors. In our model, firms choose affiliation to a technical standards coalition in the first stage of a game, and play an oligopoly game in the second stage. In adding itself to a technical standards coalition, a firm benefits from the network effects of the whole coalition, but also faces increased competition in the output market from other firms in the coalition. Also, the increase of the size of the coalition changes the competitive position of members of that coalition relative to other firms. We find that the extent and size of coalitions at equilibrium depends crucially on the degree of the intensity of network effects. When network effects are very strong, full compatibility prevails. When externalities are slightly weaker, two standards coalitions are formed, a singleton, and one with all remaining firms. On the other extreme, for very weak network effects, the equilibrium is total incompatibility, and for slightly more intense network effects, coalitions are of small size. We characterize a number of other equilibria for intermediate strengths of network externalities.

In this excellent book Brett Christophers offers an intriguing, historically informed but partially inadequate response to a significant deficit in the regulationist analysis of political economy. Regulationists ask why, despite its inherent contradictions and crisis tendencies, capital accumulation proceeds relatively smoothly for significant periods in specific spatio-temporal settings. They explain this through the trial-and-error emergence and consolidation of specific growth regimes and corresponding modes of re ́ gulation-cum- governance that, together, create complementary institutional forms and social norms and values that facilitate the integration of different circuits of capital and the development of a workable social compromise. Christophers notes correctly that regulationists often neglect the role of law, litigation, and judicial decision-making in securing this improbable result. This deficit is unfortunate because, as he rightly claims, law has a key role in modulating the balance between simultaneous tendencies to competition and monopoly in ‘capitalist regimes of profitability and growth’. He then explores this topic in two steps: a theoretical account of the complex dialectics of competition and monopoly that frames detailed studies of three successive periods in the development of anti-trust law, which aims to limit monopoly in favour of competition, and of intellectual property rights (IPRs), which are intended to fashion and protect monopoly. (2016: 4).

In spite of Cournot’s unquestionable influence on contemporary theory, his legacy regarding economic policy and, especially, the regulation of monopolies is mostly unknown. In this paper I explore the several forms of Cournot’s analysis of monopolistic market structures, starting with his theoretical model up to his normative and empirical examination. With the help of little known texts of the author I aim at showing the versatility of his ideas and the richness of his analytical legacy. Against this setup I retrace his influence over three of the most important economists of the end of the XIXth century: Walras, Edgeworth and Marshall. I show that there exists a theoretical representation that constitutes the indisputable reference regarding monopolies that is enriched with normative analyses and leads each one of them to their own specific proposals in regulation and economic policy.

The trend in the district heating industry is toward increased privatization and openness to competition, which bring with them other phenomena associated with civil law, such as bankruptcies. Vingåker was one of six Swedish municipalities hose district heating companies went bankrupt in 2004. The bankruptcy caused major disruptions in Vingåker, not least as a result of the unregulated legal framework that has long prevailed in the area of district heating, where there is essentially no consumer protection.

A distinguishing feature of Vingåker, and one that may be assumed to apply to other smaller municipalities as well, is the fact that the municipality was the totally dominant customer in the district heating system. In its negotiations, the municipality was able to exploit this position of strength by refusing to pay the district heating price set by the trustee in bankruptcy while still continuing to have district heat delivered. At the same time, the case of Vingåker also shows that, in heir procurement processes, municipalities need to conduct a thorough analysis of he ownership structures of the bidding companies, and determine the extent to which each company is established in the industry. Yet another lesson to be taken from this case is that changes in external factors such as fuel costs and taxes, which are difficult for local actors to influence, create a need to draw up short-term contracts that allow for adjustments in the district heating rates.

Executive Summary Following privatization of Telecom NZ and entry of competing network operators, significant disputes have arisen over termination pricing and other terms of interconnection. This paper describes principles of interconnection and it proposes that they be incorporated in the law, so that they are applied to negotiations and possible arbitration of disputes among network operators.

Se ha considerado el comportamiento del sector eléctrico como un factor de gran trascendencia en desenvolvimiento de la economía de un país. Sin embargo, es notable el desconocimiento de algunas personas no especialistas es esta temática, de los conceptos básicos y de la organización intrínseca de este sector. Por lo tanto, resulta conveniente la realización de un artículo que informe de manera descriptiva sobre la naturaleza y funcionamiento del sector eléctrico en Colombia, como punto de partida para posteriores estudios y profundos análisis de temas relacionados con este sector. Entre los aspectos básicos que una persona debe conocer para estar en capacidad de entender y argumentar sobre el comportamiento del sector eléctrico en Colombia podemos citar, entre otros, los siguientes: antecedentes e historia del sector, agentes e instituciones del mercado, variables importantes en la toma de decisiones, contratos de corto y largo plazo, y finalmente algunos procedimientos que actualmente se encuentran en discusión, los cuales podrían cambiar el funcionamiento del Mercado de Energía Mayorista en Colombia

According to the neoclassical economic theory, common goods would be underproduced by the market in the absence of a monopoly of force capable of coercing every able member of society to contribute to their provision. By applying both the methodological tools developed by the Austrian School of Economics and the tools used to investigate the institutional robustness of various systems of political economy, I shall argue, first, that the neoclassical characteristics of common goods are based on a number of false assumptions or unacceptable oversimplifications, and second, that even if they were correct as stated, they would not establish the desirability of the existence of a monopoly of force.

The U.S. has a deficit problem. Both political parties agree that the debt and the deficit must be addressed, but are at odds about how to do so. Worse still, there are members of both parties who make finding solutions difficult because of entrenched ideology. As we approach the second year of Congressional impasse, it appears that this crisis is far from over. It is little wonder that teaching students about this issue is difficult. There are myriad nuances and complexities that are challenging to get across to students through traditional means. Simulations are one way to introduce students to complex phenomena by allowing them to experience them. Simulations have proven to be effective teaching tools for addressing subjective experiences and fostering inquiry. Shifts in student dispositions also may occur with simulations. This paper walks the reader through an adaptation of the board game Monopoly to demonstrate how this simulation game can be used to teach students about the deficit crisis and debate from multiple perspectives across the socioeconomic spectrum.

This article examines the impact of customer reward programs on the competitive outcome in duopolistic markets. We argue that loyalty discounts for repeat customers constitute a commitment device beneficial to suppliers rather than customers. Analyzing a two-period Bertrand model we show that the use of loyalty discounts makes it possible for duopolists to attain the fully collusive outcome in both periods. By offering generous loyalty discounts, the firms can credibly commit to refrain from second period poaching given that they attract enough customers in period one. Loyalty discounts invite firms to collude in the first period.

Profiling activities used to personalise user content can place online corporations in a position of significant influence over user behaviour. The ability to deliver different search engine results, news feeds, discriminatory prices, and so forth, can be exploited to grant unequal access to different kinds of content. This is likely to intensify with the Internet of Things (IoT), which will surround individuals with sensors capable of 24/7 full tracking. This content-shaping power jeopardises the neutral accessibility that a democratic internet should ensure. Indeed, both neutrality and accessibility should refer not only to the service connection but also to the content it delivers. This study examines this personalisation and filtering power in light of Privacy and Data Protection regulations to explore how privacy principles can be used to enhance IoT accessibility. It elaborates a comparative analysis of legislative sources related to public goods and interests, data flows and contract law relationships, into a holistic narrative reasoning. The discussion addresses the monopolistic economic position of platforms, their connected revenue models and the power to control and influence information. Fake news plays a crucial role in this and is addressed consequently. Therefore, the study analyses how these factors together could form profiling 'multi-monopolies' in connection with a non-neutral Internet of Things. Furthermore, techniques of influence have more grip where there is a lack of awareness and knowledge, and a new model of digital "divide et impera" seems to enhance these phenomena. Besides, social score systems and discriminatory pricing can be powerful tools in this sense. We discuss the gap between regulatory approaches and real-world situations, offering common legal tools and Privacy by Design (PbD) as potential solutions for neutral accessibility. We highlight how the current regulatory framework requires more harmonisation to guarantee effective user protections, especially in an IoT ecosystem. Neutralidade da rede importa: anticorpos de privacidade para monopólios de informação e profiling em massa Resumo As atividades de profiling usadas para personalizar o conteúdo disponibilizado aos usuários podem colocar as empresas de Internet em uma posição de influência significativa sobre o seu comportamento. A capacidade de fornecer diferentes resultados de mecanismos de pesquisa, feeds de notícias, preços discriminatórios, dentre outras, pode ser explorada para garantir acesso desigual a diferentes tipos de conteúdo. É provável que isso se intensifique com a Internet das Coisas (IoT), que cercará indivíduos com sensores capazes de rastreamento completo 24 horas por dia, 7 dias por semana. Esse poder de modelagem de conteúdo põe em risco a acessibilidade neutra que uma Internet democrática deve garantir. De fato, tanto a neutralidade quanto a acessibilidade devem se referir não apenas à conexão do serviço, mas também ao conteúdo que ele fornece. Este estudo examina esse poder de personalização e filtragem à luz dos regulamentos de Privacidade e Proteção de Dados para explorar como os princípios de privacidade podem ser usados para aprimorar a acessibilidade da IoT. Elabora-se uma análise comparativa de fontes legislativas relacionadas a bens e interesses públicos, fluxos de dados e relações de direito contratual, em um raciocínio narrativo holístico. A discussão aborda a posição econômica monopolista das plataformas, seus modelos conectados de receita e o poder de controlar e influenciar as informações. Fake news desempenham um papel crucial nisso e, consequentemente, são abordadas. Portanto, o estudo analisa como esses fatores podem, juntos, formar 'multimonopólios' de profiling em conexão com uma Internet das Coisas não neutra. Além disso, as técnicas de influência são mais abrangentes onde há falta de consciência e conhecimento, e um novo modelo digital de "dividir para conquistar" parece intensificar esses fenômenos. Ademais, sistemas de pontuação social e preços discriminatórios podem ser ferramentas poderosas nesse sentido. Discutimos a lacuna entre abordagens regulatórias e situações do mundo real, oferecendo ferramentas legais comuns e o Privacy by Design (PbD) como possíveis soluções para acessibilidade neutra. Destacamos como a atual estrutura regulatória exige mais harmonização para garantir proteções efetivas ao usuário, especialmente em um ecossistema de IoT. Palavras-chave Privacy by design; Profiling; Neutralidade da rede; Fake news; Preços discriminatórios; Sistema de crédito social; Internet das Coisas.

Korean historians have long noted the importance of tobacco in colonial finances and highlighted the economic exploitation of the farmers and laborers involved in the tobacco production system. However, the economic history of tobacco production is far more complex than can be subsumed under the predominant narratives of colonial exploitation. The production of tobacco in colonial Korea has to be understood within the broader context of Japan’s imperial expansion and the regional competition for the East Asian tobacco market in the early twentieth century. British and American Tobacco (BAT) was a formidable presence in the region, which forced the Japanese to concentrate on markets within the Japanese empire. A new period of expansion commenced after the Manchurian Incident in 1931, and the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 allowed for the rapid growth of the Japanese tobacco industry in Manchuria and China. As Japanese imperial tobacco production expanded in colonial Korea, the commodity had an immense impact on Korean society and culture. Korean consumers constructed new cultural meanings and identities around tobacco that varied considerably depending on one’s social status and position within Korean society. Through a nuanced examination of tobacco’s multifaceted interactions within the Japanese empire, we can better understand many important aspects of colonial Korea’s economy, society and culture.

In order to cater for the predicted growth in global population and aspirations for increased living standards, the world needs to increase substantially its level of agricultural production and sustain agriculture’s increased productivity. New technologies may enable this to occur but they also bring with them increased sustainability problems. There are many complex dimensions to achieving agricultural sustainability such as deciding on what agricultural attributes are worth sustaining and considering what trade-offs in objectives are required. These issues are discussed from a conceptual point of view. It is also shown using economic theory that market-based agriculture limits the opportunity for individual farmers to adopt sustainable agricultural techniques because of competitive economic pressures. It is argued that while modern agricultural methods and increased inter-regional trade have substantially increased agricultural supplies, they have also exacerbated the problem of sustaining agricultural production and yields and have had a disequilibrating effect on rural communities. Although genetic engineering is seen by some as a way forward for increasing agricultural production, it is shown that GMOs do not ensure sustainability of agricultural production and that they can be a source of rural disharmony and can threaten the sustainability of farming communities. Extension of intellectual property rights in new genetic material in recent times, particularly the granting of patents not only on techniques for producing GMOs but on the organisms themselves, have added to sustainability problems faced by modern agriculture.

This essay provides an overview of some research that is in its early stages. The principal purpose of the authors is to understand whether, in a Continental European legal system such as the Italian one-traditionally led by a strong historical and normative vision of copyright (or author's right) as natural right and nowadays influenced by the EU propertization trend-it is yet possible to foresee a different approach that is prone to interpreting the exclusivity of copyright in terms of monopoly. The latter approach, to some extent, might in fact be more relevant to restricting copyright protection by limiting the exclusive rights (ius excludendi alios) while supporting the public interest. Besides, the vision of "copyright as monopoly" seems in particular to play an overriding role within the digital context, where property is less apt in terms of the promotion and sharing of knowledge and, on the contrary, monopolistic jeopardy is sensibly flourishing.

This paper studies the efficacy of entry threats in a contestable environment using experiments. It is hypothesized here that the entrant firm’s home market profits influence the entrant’s competitive behavior even when entry is costless and completely reversible. In the experiment, entrants and incumbents tacitly collude when each has its own monopoly market. In contrast, an entrant from a competitive market practices hit-and-run entry whenever such opportunities exist, forcing the incumbent monopolist to price at average cost. The experiment results suggest that the usefulness of hit-and-run competitive threat in a contestable environment depends crucially on the relative profits in the entrant’s and the incumbent’s home and entry markets.

Transportation networks, such as railways, roads and highways provide standard examples of natural monopolies. Since the introduction of the term "natural monopoly" by T. Malthus in 1815, this concept has been defined in different ways by several authors (F. Bastiat, J. S. Mill or L. Walras). The current formal definition is due to Baumol (1977) and is based on the subadditivity of the cost functions. After estimating the cost functions, the researcher can test whether subadditive holds or not. Natural monopolies are associated to market efficiencies, which call for regulation (e.g., price cap regulation and Ramsey-Boiteux regulatory policy). As a key example, the econometric study of the British railways in the 19 th century shed light on the difficulty of regulating natural monopolies.

This paper uses a theoretical framework and a by use of a franchising model will examine the practice of charging a franchise fee for the use of the trademark and will show how this practice by controlling the number of franchised operations enables franchisor to extract monopoly profit. Paper will further examine the conditions which the joint practice of franchise fee and royalty rate allows extraction of monopoly rent.

The relevance of the study is determined by the need to establish corporate responsibility for breach of
legislation. In this regard, this paper is aimed at identifying features of competition and corporate responsibility for breach
of competition law. Particular attention is drawn to the case when corporations become monopolists and, in fact, dictate
market rules. Consideration of the development aspect of competition law suggests that it largely limits the growth of
corporate business and forces corporations to formulate strategies for splitting the business, thereby determining the
conduct of business. In the modern world, where business is in many respects globalised, such measures can lead to a
decrease in market indicators and form a dependence on the operations of certain corporations in the local market. The
leading method to the study of this issue is the modelling method, which allows to consider this problem as a targeted
and organised procedure related to the improvement and application of competition law, as well as the protection and
development of competition. The novelty of the study lies in the possibility of limiting the activities of a corporation in a
market that is occupied by it and where there is no practical competition. The authors consider the mechanism of selfregulation as a source of domestic competition law. The paper determines that self-regulation processes are also subject
to state supervision and thus corporate self-regulation becomes an aspect of the regulation of competition enforcement
by the state at large. The practical significance of the study is determined by the structural feature of the corporation as a
quasi-state mechanism and the regulation of external relations between the state and corporations as tax residents on
this basis.

Some patent owners and their attorneys believe that collusive arrangements among potential infringers may result in suppressed prices for patent licenses. An analogous problem exists for aspiring professional athletes, who are the cream of the athletic crop in a way that patent owners may be in the technological arts. Some athletes have claimed that teams collude not to offer competitive remuneration for superlative performance, starting with high school prospects, most clearly at the university and college level, and during the professional league’s drafts and free-agency rulemakings.  Recently, courts have ruled that some collusive arrangements in athletics, amounting to conspiracies not to bid up the value of athletes’ intellectual property rights including their rights of publicity, are subject to antitrust challenge under section 1 of the Sherman Act.  May the same be said for arrangements in the technology arts, when alleged conspiracies depress bids on patent licenses and assignments? 

This Article develops a framework for analyzing antitrust case disputes concerning agreements, combinations, and/or conspiracies to undermine the enjoyment and licensing of intellectual property rights. Traditionally, conspiring to depress as well as to raise prices was a per se antitrust violation.  Raising rivals’ costs of revenue and reducing opportunities for the distribution, legal protection, and sale or licensing of rivals’ inventions are anticompetitive tactics. Antitrust law and economic research have regarded such strategies as exclusionary conduct when engaged in by a monopolist, as cartelization or conspiracy when adopted jointly by competitors desiring to regulate their industries,  and as presenting a danger of distorting the market when resulting from mergers or asset purchases.