Economies throughout both the developed and developing world are interconnected like never before, whether it is the financing of global challenges, monetary integration among a group of countries or trade across national borders. This increasing degree of interconnection brings both opportunities and challenges for the countries involved. This volume provides an analysis of three distinct but closely related themes of economic interconnection: Public Finance, Monetary Policy and Market Issues. The collection will stimulate further debate on these issues and in doing so will help to broaden the exchange of ideas among economists in both academia and business.

This volume contains the papers presented at WINE 2009:the 5th International Workshop on Internet and Network Economics held December 14–18, 2009, in Rome,attheDepartmentofComputerandSystemSciences,SapienzaUniversity of Rome. Over the past decade there has been growing interaction between researchers in theoretical computer science, networking and security, economics, mathem- ics, sociology, and management sciences devoted to the analysis of problems arising in the Internet and the worldwide web. The Workshop on Internet and Network Economics (WINE) is an interdisciplinary forum for the exchange of ideas and results arising in these varied ?elds. There were 142 submissions to the workshop including regular and short - pers.Allsubmissionswererigorouslypeer reviewedandevaluatedonthebasisof the quality of their contribution, originality,soundness, and signi?cance. Almost all submissions were reviewed by at least three Program Committee members. The committee decided to accept 34 regular papers and 29 short papers. The Best Student Paper award sponsored by Google Inc. was given to Saeed Alaei and AzarakhshMalekianfor the paper “An Analysisof Troubled Assets Reverse Auction.” The program also included three invited talks by S. Muthukrishnan (Google Inc.and RutgersUniversity),H. PeytonYoung (OxfordandJohns Hopkins U- versity)andEvaTardos(CornellUnversity).Threetutorialswerealsoo?eredon the days before the workshop, from Andrei Broder (Yahoo! Research) on C- putational Advertising, Nikhil Devanur and Kamal Jain (Microsoft Research) on Computational Issues in Market Equilibria, and Tim Roughgarden(Stanford University) on Bayesian and Worst-Case Revenue Maximization.

This Handbook explores and critically examines current research in economics and marketing science on key issues in retailing and distribution. Providing a rich perspective for the discussion of public policy, contributions from several disciplines and continents range from the history of chains and the impact of multinational retailers on international trade patterns to US merger policy in the retail context, the rise of the Internet, and consumer-to-consumer sales. The chapters address methodological issues such as the structural estimation of entry games between retailers, productivity measurement when both inputs and output are not fully observable, and demand estimation with variable assortment. Policy issues explored include mergers, zoning, and the regulation of buyer power, while other chapters address some of the recent exciting developments in technology, retail formats, and data availability. The book goes on to study the changes in online retailing and ‘big data’, and to examine competition in specific retail sectors including gasoline stations, automobile dealerships, supermarkets, and ‘big box’ retail. This state-of-the-art Handbook is an essential reference for students and academics of economics and marketing science, and offers an outsider’s perspective to specialists in operations research, data analytics, geography, and sociology.

Determinants of firm and market organization; Analysis of market behavior; Empirical methods and results; International issues and comparision; government intervention in the Marketplace.

This book offers a careful scrutiny of energy and telephony reforms and their social impact on households in 15 countries across Western Europe. It concludes that the benefits for consumers are limited and it discusses the reasons why the European reform experiment of network industries is not living up to its promises.