Estelle MALAVOLTI's HDR defense - December 14th

December 14, 2018 Campus

Estelle Malavolti will defend her HDR on “Issues in the Implementation of the Competition Policy :  an Economic Analysis” on Friday, December 14th, 2018 at 9:45 am, Room MF323. 

Director: Patrick REY, professor of Economics at TSE and Toulouse CAPITOLE University.

Memberships are:

  • Natalia FABRA ( Professor of Economics at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid),
  • Michele POLO (Professor of Economics at Bocconi University)
  • Anming ZHANG (Professor of Economics at University of British Columbia, Sauder school of Business)
  • Claudes CRAMPES (Professor of Economics atTSE)
  • Patrick REY (Professor of Economiics at TSE)

Abstract:

The present work deals with problems of Competion Policy implementation. It falls into 3 different parts : a first part is dedicated to the economic analysis of the European Competition Policy reform occurred in 2004, a second part addresses the implementation of Competition Policy to the specific sector of Air Transportation ; finally, the last part focuses on regulation issues applied to the air transport sector.

The first category of problems I address deals with the reform of the European competition policy. This subject is twofold: on the one hand the inter-firm agreement aspect, and on the other hand the decentralization of the implementation of the European competition policy at the level of the national competition authorities. Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 report the related research results. Chapter 1 proposes an economic analysis of the modification of the ex ante notification regime to the ex post control regime of the inter-firm agreements. Chapter 2 is further divided in two sections: decentralization of the competition policy (Chapter 2.2), and the more general problem of decision decentralization in the case of binary message (Chapter 2.1). This work yielded four published research papers.

Chapter 3 addresses the problem of implementing the competition policy
to a particular sector of the economy. The basic idea questions whether specific features of the economic sector under consideration could induce an adaptation of the competition-policy application rules. This subject yielded three research papers included in the present Habilitation manuscript: Chapter 3.1 concentrates on the anti-competitive effects of the subsidies given to low-cost airliners, Chapter 3.2 deals with the airport business models using bi-face models, and Chapter 3.3 focuses on the interaction of regulation and competition policy in the particular case of government subsidies given to regional airports.

In Chapter 4, I consider the potential evolution of regulation in the air transportation sector, which is a very special application field to me regarding my academic position at ENAC (the French civil aviation university). I concentrate more specifically on how to improve the performance of the air transportation system through the use of innovative contracts by national regulation authorities.