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The chapters of this thesis are driven by contemporary competition policy questions. Although each chapter is self-standing, they all concern the effect of mergers on competition and pricing. To date one chapter is complete, it includes a theoretical model which determines the competitive effects of mergers across hub-and-spoke networks. The analysis put forward in this thesis upgrade forms the basis of a 2°d chapter. It translates recent theoretical insights on tacit collusion and asymmetries onto a graph, which can be used to identify those mergers most likely to result in coordinated effects. A sample of 73 merger cases investigated by the European Competition Commission is drawn on, and their model of tacit coordination unravelled. A third chapter will follow from this analysis and will incorporate an in-depth case study of a market where collective dominance was a competition concern. It will examine how the market has evolved since intervention and test whether the empirical evidence is consistent with the theory.

The objective of this study is to define, transfer and apply the concept of regional competitiveness to an oil rich developing country. Regional competitiveness is considered a composite relative concept that can be defined through conceptualising regions in terms of their respective competencies, attractiveness towards factors of production, existing systems and networks [e.g. knowledge networks], spatial interdependences and the subsequent relationships with regional productivity growth and sustainable prosperity. However, for the purpose of application to an oil rich developing economy where the existing of knowledge intensive industry and limited ability to generate knowledge capital, alongside fledgling knowledge systems and networks in place, this emphasis in the discourse limits the transferability of existing models since they would penalise developing and under-developing countries by design. Therefore to achieve this thesis' objective, a modified descriptive regional competitiveness framework was identified that works to benchmark regional inequalities and highlight sector based competitiveness within a given country. The regional model presented in this study benchmarks comparative regional performance across four core factors underpinning competitiveness: Drivers [Human Resources. Investment. Industrial Diversity/Market Size J. Inputs [Knowledge Intensity of Operations. Linkage Intensity. Competitive Environment]. Output [Industry Productivity. Labour Productivity, Sector Contribution to GDP. and Outcomes [Employment. Earnings, Sector based Income per Capita]. Instead of emphasising the growth and development of knowledge based industry. the knowledge component within the definition of regional competitiveness is satisfied by benchmarking the respective knowledge intensity of existing industry across a given sector thus enabling the transfer of the concept of competitiveness to an oil rich developing country. The comparative scoreboard approach is used to benchmark regional performance in manufacturing activity in Oman. in line with the standardised practices of existing published competitiveness indicators. Replenishment and depletion channels are introduced into the model to emphasise that individual scoreboards benchmark periodic rather than annual competitiveness and that RID channels benchmarks changes in the factors underpinning regional competitiveness between two or more consecutive periods. The case of Oman was selected as it is an under-researched developing oil rich economy that managed to show consistent long run growth in GO? and GDP per capita in defiance of the apparent resource curse outlined in some of the oil rich literature. The proposed regional competitiveness framework targets individual sectors rather than aggregated cross-sector regional performance where in the case of Oman the manufacturing sector was selected since it potentially provides an alternative producing sector to mining and quarrying activities. It is proposed that the usefulness of the approach deployed in this study lies in targeting an entire sector of the economy rather than aggregated cross-sector data to highlight: the extent of prevalent regional inequalities in development terms. Given that industrial organisation and micro-economic development in oil- rich developing countries remain largely under-researched. especially in cases like Oman. the application of a descriptive regional competitiveness framework to a particular sector works to transform inaccessible raw Industry data into accessible scoreboards that benchmark sector specific regional performance across the four core competitiveness factors. This creates the platform for more in-depth cross-industry studies. identifying potential obstacles hindering growth and an arguably useful repository that informs regional development policy.

In the wake of increasing global competition growing public attention has been paid to issues of national competitiveness and national differences in industrial perfo1mance. In particular the success of .high-technology industries has preoccupied the public mind. In this context, authors like Porter (1990) have contended that national competitive advantage is industiy-specific, i. e. that national competitiveness should be analysed on the level of particular industries and not of the national economy. At the same time, the end of the Cold War has fostered an awareness for the different shapes 'Western capitalism' has taken in different countries. Furthermore, the economic rise of Japan with her very different cultural roots has spmTed an interest in the economic effects of national culture. However, so far little is known about the link between different national 'host cultures', national institutional environments and the success of firms in different industries. The thesis therefore tries to investigate this relationship. It is based on the proposition that particular countries enjoy a competitive advantage in particular industries and that this competitive advantage can be related to the national cultural setting within which these industries operate. To address this question, the study will conceptualise a theoretical relationship between national culture and industrial competitiveness and illustrate this theoretical relationship empirically with a pattern recognition exercise. The pattern recognition exercise tries to use existing empirical evidence to identify a number of explicit affinities between patterns of national culture, national business systems and industrial task environments. This may suggest the plausibility of a link between national culture and industiy-specific competitive advantage and allow to formulate some tentative propositions for further research. The theoretical relationship assumes that national culture is enacted in national business systems, which in tum are seen to entail a differing ability to deal with the task environments of particular types of industries. Industrial competitiveness is thus conceived to arise out of a fit between patterns of culturally grounded business systems and patterns of industrial task environments. The pattern recognition exercise will deal with four countries and one competitive industry for each of the four countries. The four countries are the United States, Japan, Germany and Britain. The industries selected are the motion picture industry in the case of the United States, the photocopier indushy in the case of Japan, the machine tool industiy in the case of Germany and the financial services industry in the case of Britain. The results of this research suggest a relationship between individualistic, transformative cultures and national competitive advantage in knowledge-intensive industries with a high transferability of knowledge, i.e. in industries in which firms rely more on their flexible openness towards new sources of knowledge. They also suggest a relationship between communitarian, transformative cultures and national competitive advantage in knowledge-intensive industries with a low transferability of knowledge, i.e. in industries in which firms rely more on the accumulation of organisation-specific knowledge. These relationships may define a new programme of research, but also have practical implications in terms of the evaluation of policies at the corporate, sectoral or national level.

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