Excessive Prices: Using Economics to Define Administrable Legal Rules

European competition laws condemn as ‘exploitative abuses’the pricing policies of dominant firms that may result in adirect loss of consumer welfare. Article 82(a) of the EC Treaty,for example, expressly states that imposing ‘unfair’prices on consumers by dominant suppliers constitutes an abuse.Several firms have been found to abuse their dominant positionsby charging excessive prices in cases brought by the EuropeanCommission and the competition authorities of several MemberStates. Those cases show that the assessment of excessive pricingis subject to substantial conceptual and practical difficulties,and that any policy that seeks to detect and prohibit excessiveprices is likely to yield incorrect predictions in numerousinstances. In this paper, we evaluate the pros and cons of alternativelegal standards towards excessive pricing by explicitly consideringthe likelihood of false convictions/acquittals and the costsassociated with those errors. We find that the legal standardthat maximizes long-term consumer welfare, given the informationtypically available to regulators, would involve no ex postintervention on the pricing decisions of dominant firms. A possibleexception to this general rule is discussed.     

The European Union and gender mainstreaming: Constitutionally embedded or comprehensively marginalised?

This paper examines the extent to which gender mainstreaming is constitutionally embedded in the legal framework of the European Union. Within the framework of that broad question it examines three sub-questions concerning the robustness and constitutionalised nature of the E.U.'s `equality regime', the extent of adaptation to mainstreaming methodologies by supranational institutions such as the Court of Justice, and the extent of the gender dimension in the debates which are shaping the future of the European Union, especially the 2002–3Convention on the Future of the Union and the Commission's Governance White Paper of 2001.The E.U. is analysed in this article as an emergent, non-state, postnational constitutionalised polity. The first section presents this perspective, and the succeeding three sections engage with the three` sub-questions' outlined above. The conclusion suggests that as yet, while gender concerns maybe constitutionally embedded in the Treatyframe work, they are less prominent in the constitutional politics of the Convention and the Governance White Paper. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Shift patterns and hardiness: Police use of lethal force during simulated incidents

In the present experiment, utilizing the Film Fire' shooting simulation system, the effects of shift patterns and hardiness on police officers' judgments (decisions to (i) shoot at a suspect and (ii) taking cover during the confrontation) were examined. Sixty-one Authorised Firearms Officers were briefed on two “incidents” they would be asked to attend. The experiment took place at three different times, each time one hour before completion of the shift: at 1 p.m. (early day shift), 9 p.m. (late day shift), or 5 a.m. (night shift). In one incident the officer would be justified in shooting the suspect, whereas in the other incident it would be difficult for the officer to justify having shot the suspect. Because in both incidents the suspects were threatening the police officer, taking cover during both incidents would be desirable. Results revealed that most erroneous decisions occurred during the early shift, and that officers low in hardiness made more incorrect judgments than officers high in hardiness. Implications of the findings are discussed. Authors' Note: This study has been sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), studentship award given to the first author.     

Governing by Looking Back: Historical Analogies and Crisis Management

This article offers a conceptual framework that broadens and enhances our understanding of the role of 'history' in contemporary governance and the attempts by policy-makers to 'manage' critical issues. Building upon the literature on historical analogies in policy-making, we distinguish three dimensions that clarify how the past may emerge in and affect the current deliberations, choices and rhetoric of policy-makers. We apply this in a comparative examination of two cases of crisis management where historical analogies played an important part: the Swedish response to (alleged) submarine intrusions in 1982, and the European Union sanctions against Austria in 1999. We induce from the case comparison new concepts and hypotheses for understanding the role of historical analogies in public policy-making and crisis management.     

Attack of the killer acronyms: the future of information technology law

This paper looks at the field of information technology (IT) law and its reliance on the buzzwords, jargon and acronyms that tend to alienate serious discussion about some of the deeper socio‐legal issues involved. It is often easy to become confused by the terminology and the technology, which has led to some non‐issues receiving too much interest (the year 2000 bug for example) and some valuable and worthy topics being almost ignored. Some writers and researchers may be tempted to neglect the field because of a lack of understanding of the technology, which may eventually lead to the end of IT law as a serious field of research. This paper will attempt to re‐ignite the jurisprudential debate about the future of IT law research, teaching and practice by looking at the possible trends emerging from the literature.