The EU has been promoting unbundling of the transmission grid from other stages of the electricity supply chain with the aim of fostering competition in the upstream stage of electricity generation. At presence, ownership unbundling is the predominant form of unbundling in Europe. However, the benefits of increased competition from ownership unbundling of the transmission grid may come at the cost of lost vertical synergies between the formerly integrated stages of electricity supply. The policy debate generally neglects such potential costs of unbundling, yet concentrates on its benefits. Therefore European crosscountry evidence may shed some light on this issue. This study helps fill this void by empirically estimating the magnitude of economies of vertical integration (EVI) between electricity generation and transmission based on a quadratic cost function. For this purpose we employ novel firm-level panel data of major European electricity utilities. Our results confirm the presence of substantial EVI, which put the policy measure of transmission ownership unbundling into question. (authors' abstract) / Series: Working Papers / Research Institute for Regulatory Economics

The thesis deals with the asymmetric ex-ante regulation applied in the electronic com-munications sector in order to strengthen the competitive ability of alternative operators at the expense of incumbent operators' competitiveness with the aim of reinforcing effective competition in the electronic communications markets. The author is concer-ned with the regulatory instrument entailing an obligation on the fixed incumbent opera-tors to open their access networks to other operators. This is called Local Loop Unbund-ling (LLU). The thesis assesses regulatory impacts on the Czech electronic communi-cations market. The market development in the Czech Republic certified the negative regulatory effect on the fixed alternative operators'motivation to build their own access infrastructure. The author tries to find the dismotivating elements of the present-day LLU regulatory form by means of the Czech LLU market analysis. The author adverts to the undesirable regulatory effect on both alternative operators'and incumbent opera-tors'investment motivation. The thesis offers reasoning why the pro-competitive regula-tory policy (inhibiting investments necessary for the sector development) is not appro-priate.

This diploma thesis analyses electro energy market organisation in the European Union and the United States of America. Liberalisation tendencies occurred in both areas during the 90's. The liberalisation is supposed to increase quality and reliability of electricity supplies as well as decrease electricity price. Electro energy industry belongs to the so called network industries, whose specifics prevent smooth liberalisation process. The vertically integrated companies or utilities in the US behave monopolistically on the market making the industry work inefficiently. Consequently, prices paid by customers are too high. The liberalisation should enable new participants to enter the market more easily as result of competition introduction and thereby also lead to pricing based on supply and demand interaction. The thesis also deals with price development in European and American areas liberalised to different extent. You can see number of similar tendencies and problems despite different way of electro energy market organisation in the EU and the US.

The cellular operators (Vodacom, Cell C, MTN and now Virgin Mobile) market has over 39-million mobile phone subscribers and the fixed operator (Telkom) has almost 5 million subscribers [13]. Although the telecommunication sector has been experiencing this significant growth (in terms of numbers), monopolisation of the local loop by Telkom has also resulted in communication prices that are not affordable to the majority of South Africans. The government of South Africa has identified cost of telecommunication services as one of the key initiatives that must be addressed to improve equal levels of access to ICT services in general. Local Loop Unbundling (or LLU for short) has been identified by the South African government as a tool that will minimise control that Telkom has over the copper cable connecting exchanges to customers whilst at the same time driving down the costs of Telecommunication in the country. Although some countries have successfully implemented local loop unbundling, some have not been so successful [3]. This dissertation proposes ICT Systems and processes South Africa needs to have in place to become one of the few success stories. The proposed model was validated against the different models adopted in countries like France, Portugal, United Kingdom and Austria. This dissertation develops a model for implementing local loop unbundling in the South African ICT sector. Local loop unbundling (in short LLU) has been successfully (and unsuccessfully) implemented in a number of countries around the world [3]. The model being proposed recommends best practices to be followed by all stakeholders to ensure successful deployment of local loop unbundling. The research takes a closer look at the South African ICT sector and makes recommendations on processes and systems that are necessary to ensure successful deployment of local loop unbundling in South Africa. The dissertation is written from the view of Telkom (The incumbent Operator), competitors (existing ones and new entrants) and the Regulator (ICASA) and focuses mainly on:  Technical Processes and Challenges that must be addressed  Regulatory Process and Challenges that must be addressed  Economic Challenges that must be addressed  Comparison to international ICT Markets and  Recommendations and Conclusions. The dissertation also covers the development of the Local loop unbundling model charter, Local Loop Management website and processes (Annexure A and B) developed (using HTML) used for the management of the unbundling process. Keywords: o Local loop o Caged Co-location / Thesis (M.Ing. (Development and Management Engineering)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

The cellular operators (Vodacom, Cell C, MTN and now Virgin Mobile) market has over 39-million mobile phone subscribers and the fixed operator (Telkom) has almost 5 million subscribers [13]. Although the telecommunication sector has been experiencing this significant growth (in terms of numbers), monopolisation of the local loop by Telkom has also resulted in communication prices that are not affordable to the majority of South Africans. The government of South Africa has identified cost of telecommunication services as one of the key initiatives that must be addressed to improve equal levels of access to ICT services in general. Local Loop Unbundling (or LLU for short) has been identified by the South African government as a tool that will minimise control that Telkom has over the copper cable connecting exchanges to customers whilst at the same time driving down the costs of Telecommunication in the country. Although some countries have successfully implemented local loop unbundling, some have not been so successful [3]. This dissertation proposes ICT Systems and processes South Africa needs to have in place to become one of the few success stories. The proposed model was validated against the different models adopted in countries like France, Portugal, United Kingdom and Austria. This dissertation develops a model for implementing local loop unbundling in the South African ICT sector. Local loop unbundling (in short LLU) has been successfully (and unsuccessfully) implemented in a number of countries around the world [3]. The model being proposed recommends best practices to be followed by all stakeholders to ensure successful deployment of local loop unbundling. The research takes a closer look at the South African ICT sector and makes recommendations on processes and systems that are necessary to ensure successful deployment of local loop unbundling in South Africa. The dissertation is written from the view of Telkom (The incumbent Operator), competitors (existing ones and new entrants) and the Regulator (ICASA) and focuses mainly on:  Technical Processes and Challenges that must be addressed  Regulatory Process and Challenges that must be addressed  Economic Challenges that must be addressed  Comparison to international ICT Markets and  Recommendations and Conclusions. The dissertation also covers the development of the Local loop unbundling model charter, Local Loop Management website and processes (Annexure A and B) developed (using HTML) used for the management of the unbundling process. Keywords: o Local loop o Caged Co-location / Thesis (M.Ing. (Development and Management Engineering)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

The thesis deals with the results of liberalization and deregulation of the electricity sector in the European Union with a special focus on creating the internal electricity market. The first part focuses on EU energy policy. The aim is to present the wide range of policies and measures that influence the development of the internal electricity market. High attention is given to legislative measures and their proper implementation by the Member States. The following section deals with the process of liberalization and deregulation with regard to specific economic structure of the sector. The adopted measures are framed in the context of the specific economic characteristics of the electricity market, which relate to the existence of the so-called natural monopoly. The third part is devoted to regulation, regulators and their responsibilities in the internal electricity market. It focuses on their powers, methodology and cooperation within the EU. In the fourth part the regression model was developed that assesses the impact of specific variables characterizing the changes occurring in this sector on the price of electricity in Germany, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Poland and Hungary.

The EU has been promoting unbundling of the transmission grid from other stages of the electricity supply chain with the aim of fostering competition in the upstream stage of electricity generation. At present, ownership unbundling is the predominant form of unbundling in Europe. From a policy perspective, a successful unbundling regime would require that the benefits of increased competition in power generation would at least offset the associated efficiency losses from vertical divestiture. Since evidence on this topic is scarce, this study helps fill this void by empirically estimating the magnitude of economies of vertical integration (EVI) between electricity generation and transmission based on a quadratic cost function. For this purpose we employ unique firm-level panel data of European electricity utilities. Our results confirm the presence of substantial EVI of 14% for the median sized integrated utility. Moreover, EVI tend to increase with firm size.

This thesis aspires to contribute to the discussion about economic justification of current process of railway liberalisation in European Union and specifically in Czech Republic. We focus on the method of vertical separation and open access, where governments keep control over the infrastructure and its development and individual train operators compete on-track. The first section contains a summary of progress of the reform and its historical context across Europe and a review of various methods of its economic evaluation. Based on that, the next section presents a partial equilibrium econometric model applied on the route between Prague and Ostrava. Simulations are run to explore different market settings, infrastructure investment possibilities and potential tolls imposed on individual road transportation. We conclude that liberalisation followed by entry of competing railway undertakings, as well as a rational attitude of the government towards long-term infrastructure investments, are crucial for future competitiveness of railways.

This study highlights the structures and networks thatexist among financial analysts on the Swedish financial market. The study isbased on nine semi-structured interviews with buy- and sell-side analysts, anindependent analyst and an Investor Relations Manager. The theoretical framework of the study is based on acombination of the research fields Behavioral Finance and Social Studies ofFinance. These two research fields have proven to be a good basis for thequalitative approach used in the analysis. The study is divided into four thematic areas: Fundamentals / Psychology, Independence and consensus, Ranking and Social network. The results show that there are a large number offactors, structures and interpersonal relationships that affect how analystsmake their decisions and conduct their analysis. Among other things, theinterdependence between analysts and their counterparts prohibits the movetowards a more clear system for compensation. These structures can also have animpact on analysts' rationality from an individual perspective and a network perspective. Furthermore, we have found that technological developments willpose major challenges for the sell side's ability to generate revenues in the future. / Denna studie belyser de strukturer och nätverk som förekommer bland aktieanalytiker på den svenska finansmarknaden. Studien baseras på nio semi-strukturerade intervjuer av aktieanalytiker på köp- och säljsidan, en fristående analytiker samt en IR-ansvarig. Den teoretiska referensramen som studien baserar sig på är en kombination av forskningsfälten Behavioral Finance och Social Studies of Finance. Dessa två forskningsfält har visat sig utgöra en bra grund för den kvalitativa ansats som använts i analysen. Studien är uppdelad i fyra tematiska områden: Fundamenta/Psykologi, Självständighet under konsensus, Ranking och Nätverk. Resultaten visar att det finns ett stort antal faktorer, strukturer och interpersonella relationer som påverkar hur analytiker fattar sina beslut och genomför sina analyser. Bland annat innebär de ömsesidiga beroendena mellan analytikerna och deras motparter att en utveckling mot ett mer tydligt ersättningssystem förhindras. Dessa strukturer kan även ha en påverkan på analytikernas rationalitet ur ett individ- och nätverksperspektiv. Vidare har vi funnit att den tekniska utvecklingen kommer innebära stora utmaningar för säljsidans förmåga att generera intäkter i framtiden.

In programming languages, record types give a universe of discourse (via so-called Σ-types); parameterised record types fix parts of that universe ahead of time (via Π-types), and algebraic datatypes give us first-class syntax (via W-types), which can then be used to program, e.g., evaluators and optimisers. A frequently-encountered issue in library design for statically-typed languages is that, for example, the algebraic datatype implementing the first-class view of the language induced by a record declaration cannot be defined by simple reference to the record type declaration, nor to any common “source”. This leads to unwelcome repetition, and to maintenance burdens. Similarly, the “unbundling problem” concerns similar repetition that arises for variants of record types where some fields are turned into parameters. The goal of this thesis is to show how, in dependently-typed languages (DTLs), algebraic datatypes and parameterised record types can be obtained from a single pragmatic declaration within the dependently-typed language itself, without using a separate “module language”. Besides this practical shared declaration interface, which is extensible in the language, we also find that common data structures correspond to simple theories. Put simply, the thesis is about making tedious and inexpressible patterns of programming in DTLs (dependently typed languages) become mechanical and expressible. The situations described above occur frequently when working in a dependently-typed language, and it is reasonable enough to have the computer handle them. We develop a notion of contexts that serve as common source for definitions of algebraic datatype and of parameterised record types, and demonstrate a “language” of “package operations” that enables us to avoid the above-mentioned replication that pervades current library developments. On the one hand, we demonstrate an implementation of that language as integrated editor functionality — this makes it possible to directly emulate the different solutions that are employed in current library developments, and refactor these into a shape that uses single declaration of contexts, thus avoiding the usual repetition that is otherwise required for provision of record types at different levels of parameterisation and of algebraic datatypes. On the other hand, we will demonstrate that the power of dependently-typed languages is sufficient to implement such package operations in a statically-typed manner within the language; using this approach will require adapting to the accordingly-changed library interfaces. Although our development uses the dependently-typed programming language Agda throughout, we emphasise that the idea is sufficiently generic to be implemented in other DTLs. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / There are things we want to use from various perspectives, our tools show that this is possible without any duplication and in a practical and efficient fashion.