Authors: Diego Valiante, Georg Götz, Benjamin Pakula, Stephen Littlechild, Günter Knieps, Paul W.J. de Bijl, Anton Schwarz, Florian C. Haus

Editorial: Commodity Prices on the Front Line: Boom and Bust?
by Diego Valiante

Forum: “Effective Competition” in Telecommunications, Rail and Energy Markets
by Georg Götz, Benjamin Pakula, Stephen Littlechild, Günter Knieps, Paul W.J. de Bijl, Anton Schwarz, Florian C. Haus

The markets for network-based products and services pose particular problems with regard
to competition. The transition from monopolistic to competitive structures and the issues
of infrastructure sharing, dominant players and network externalities have all been subject
to intensive debates. Despite liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation – and the quasiautomatic
solutions they seemed to present – a number of problems persist. Furthermore, the
regulation which was introduced as a remedy for distortions of competition during the period
of transition from monopoly to competition has not ended with market liberalisation. Each new
generation of network technologies creates new challenges to be addressed by regulators and
competition authorities, and each industry presents specifi c problems. The following articles
discuss a number of the persisting and new questions concerning competition in selected
network-based industries.