Issue 20 July 2006
In this issue are the following articles:
High-flying competition
It goes on and on...Air New Zealand and Qantas continue to pursue approval for cartel in trans-Tasman flight, more recently with New Zealand's Ministry of Transport and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. They've been refused the approval in the past, because of regulatory concerns about the effect on prices. Tim Hazledine and Callum MacLennan report on some new research findings that suggest the regulators are justified in their concerns.
Authors:
Tim Hazledine, Callum MacLennan
The mafia as protectors of property rights
The mafia is usually associated with lawlessness, violence and thuggery - crimes against persons and property. Ironically, however, insights from economics suggest that the origins of the mafia in Sicily during the 19th century may have been due to a desire to reduce crime. As Rene Le Prou and Glenn Boyle discuss, the mafia can be seen as an institution that arose to fill a void in property rights protection.
Agreeing to disagree: when cooperative governance is best
In popular theory, cooperative organisations are the poor relations of vastly superior investor-owned firms (IOFs). They are seen as less innovative, poorly governed, and bound by financing constraints that arise from their traditionally non-tradable and non-market-valued ownership rights. Yet a closer look at the theory and evidence on these matters paints a very different picture - as Richard Meade explains.
Emission pricing: avoiding both the rock and the hard place
For at least thirty years, environmental economists like ANU's Jack Pezzey have been urging governments to control environmental quality by using indirect and artificial market forces as well as - or even instead of - direct regulation. Here Dr Pezzey explains how payment thresholds can be used to balance the politics and the economics of emission pricing.
Author:
Jack Pezzey
Has the continuous disclosure regime had an impact on corporate behaviour?
The increasingly integrated global economy and the recent spate of corporate scandals have led to renewed interest in the identification and adoption of best-practice capital market governance. New Zealand is no exception - and, in an attempt to raise the integrity and confidence in the country's capital market, the government introduced statutory sanctions to support the New Zealand Stock Exchange's (NZX's) continuous-disclosure listing rules. But have the sanctions made a difference? Gerry Gallery, one of the authors of a recent study on this, says yes - and no.
Author:
Gerry Gallery
Sunk? Fixed? Defining costs in infrastructure pricing
Lawyers learn early in their careers to be clear about the meaning of words. Economists, however, sometimes assume a common understanding of terms when no such understanding exists. The result, Kieran Murray points out, is confused analysis.
Author:
Kieran Murray
