Business School

Industrial organisation, regulation, energy, transport and environmental economics

Research in industrial organisation and regulation is focused on the behaviour of firms in markets, and on government intervention in those markets through competition policy and activist regulatory oversight.

Research in energy and environmental economics is centred on the application of economics and econometric methods to contemporary energy, resource, transport and environmental problems.

Examples of research capabilities in this area are:

Competition policy
For example, cartel prosecution, monopolisation strategies, merger analysis, cartel formation and operation in the presence of an antitrust authority, analysis of cartel leniency programmes under multi-market collusion, and airline pricing and its implications for competition policy.
Economics of research and development
Optimal and efficient research and development portfolios, intellectual property regimes and R&D incentives, R&D portfolio choices with complementary technologies, optimal contract design, entry deterrence and communication.
Economics of network industries
For example, regulation and competition policy in liberalised postal markets, the regulation and design of electricity markets, and government procurement of peak generating capacity in the electricity market.
The relationship between urban form and transport
Transport demand and infrastructure.
The design of rights-based systems of governance
For example, in fisheries and water resources and, more recently, relating to climate change.
Spatial econometrics
Modelling of risk, environmental attributes, and firm-location decisions.
Public finance issues in natural resource extraction
The optimal design of resource extraction contracts under informational asymmetries between the resource owner and the extractive firms.