Marcel Canoy

Chapter 21 The Economics of Books

Abstract This chapter analyses the tensions between books and book markets as expressions of culture and books as products in profit-making businesses and includes insights from the theory of industrial organisation. Governments intervene in the market for books through laws concerning prices of books, grants for authors and publishers, a lower value-added tax, public libraries and education in order to stimulate the diversity of books on offer, increase the density of retail outlets and promote reading. An overview of the different ways by which countries differ in terms of market structures and government policies is given. Particular attention is paid to retail price maintenance. Due to differences between European countries it is not a good idea to harmonise European book policies. Our analysis suggests that the book market seems quite able to invent solutions to specific problems of the book trade and that, apart from promoting reading, there is little need for government intervention.

Post-Enlargement Migration and Public Perception in the European Union

This chapter analyzes the role of public perception in intra EU migration. Different member states have different histories, cultures and political realities vis-a-vis migration in general and intra EU migration in particular. This leads to a role of public perception that varies between topics and between countries. The paper analyzes the veil, Poles in the UK and Roma in Italy.The study reaches four conclusions. First, there is a clear link between public perception and migration policies. It is clear that Roma migrants are treated differently in Italy than in other similar member states with relatively small native Roma population irrespective of their numbers or profile. The same picture emerged in the discussion on the veil. Second, the dual causality of migration and public perception was confirmed. In particular, the case of Poles in the UK shows that public perception prior to arrival of Poles was more negative than afterwards, partially because initial fears were based on imaginary things that might have happened after migration. Third, there is also a link between performance of migrants on the labor market and perception. With Poles in the UK case, the causality mainly runs from performance to perception. In the case of Roma in Italy, the causality was mainly from perception to performance, as it is in the case of the veil. Fourth, there has been a silent but noticeable recent positive shift in public perception on migration. It is, however, too early to conclude that there is a clear trend for three reasons. First, the trend is very recent. Only data from the last two years show the trend. Second, there could be a backlash resulting from the financial crisis. Third, there are still large differences across member states, with some member states seeing a worsening of the tone in the debate. The discussion on Roma in Italy underlines this point.

Dominance and Monopolization

This indispensable Handbook examines both economic and legal aspects of competition policy and industrial organization. It provides a scholarly review of the state of the art regarding economic theory, empirical evidence and standards of legal evaluation. The book aims primarily at furthering our understanding of the interplay between economic reasoning and legal expertise by concentrating on the fundamental issues and principles underlying competition policy.

Welfare standards in hospital mergers

There is a broad literature on the consequences of applying different welfare standards in merger control. Total welfare is usually defined as the sum of consumer and provider surplus, i.e., potential external effects are not considered. The general result is then that consumer welfare is a more restrictive standard than total welfare, which is advantageous in certain situations. This relationship between the two standards is not necessarily true when the merger has significant external effects. We model mergers on hospital markets and allow for not-profit-maximizing behavior of providers and mandatory health insurance. Mandatory health insurance detaches the financial and consumption side of health care markets, and the concept consumer in merger control becomes non-evident. Patients not visiting the merging hospitals still are affected by price changes through their insurance premiums. External financial effects emerge on not directly affected consumers. We show that applying a restricted interpretation of consumer (neglecting externality) in health care merger control can reverse the relation between the two standards; consumer welfare standard can be weaker than total welfare. Consequently, applying the wrong standard can lead to both clearing socially undesirable and to blocking socially desirable mergers. The possible negative consequences of applying a simple consumer welfare standard in merger control can be even stronger when hospitals maximize quality and put less weight on financial considerations. We also investigate the implications of these results for the practice of merger control.