Please cite this article in press as: Lévêque, F. France’s New Electricity Act: A Potential Windfall Profit for Electricity Suppliers and a Potential Incompatibility with the EU LawElectr. J. (2011), doi:10.1016/ j.tej.2011.01.016 François Lévêque is Professor of Law and Economics at Mines ParisTech, Director at the Center of Industrial Economics (Cerna), and Editor of Energypolicyblog.com. His...

For several decades industrial economics in Michael Porter’s rendering has ruled business analysis in information systems. Have Internet technologies brought the demise of Industrial Economics as tool for information systems (IS) analyses? Examples of electronic exchanges indicate a break between business and information models. We critically assess Porter’s analysis of the Internet and exchang...

Agricultural research has transformed agriculture and in doing so contributed to the transformation of economies. Economic issues arise because agricultural research is subject to various market fail­ ures, because the resulting innovations and technological changes have important economic consequences for net income and its distri­ bution, and because the consequences are difficult to discern ...

We study task allocation in multi-agent systems. Task allocation has become a major research topic over the past years [3]. Here, we are particularly interested in allocation of tasks among firms on industrial, interfirm markets. These are traditionally studied using transaction cost economics (TCE). However, as has been widely acknowledged, TCE does not include dynamics of learning, trust and ...

In the mid-1970s, the phrase “small is beautiful” became a counterculture slogan against the industrial threat to the environment and the scarcity of resources. Arguing against excessive materialism and meaningless growth, the late Dr. Ernest Friedrich Schumacher—the author of Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, promoted the use of small-scale technology to benefit both humanki...

1. Why were you initially drawn to epistemic logic? In my case it took a long and tortuous path to reach the pasture of epistemic logic. My academic career started with a degree in Law from the university of Turin, Italy. During my (compulsory) military service, following graduation, I learned of a scholarship to pursue graduate studies in economics in England. I was lucky enough to obtain it a...

This paper summarizes and extends my earlier critique (Bhattacharjea, 2006) of the empirical literature on labour regulation and industrial performance in India. I now focus only on the impact of legal restrictions on temporary layoff, permanent retrenchment and plant closures. After summarizing my earlier paper, I describe in detail the variability of employment protection regimes across India...