Vertical Integration and Separation of Firms for Regulation and Competition

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Our researches considered two issues: (1) regulatory reform and competition policy regarding vertical integration and vertical separation, and (2) vertical separation of railway industry. On the first issue, we carried out, in particular, the research on (i)a new industrial organization of Japan which is suitable to induce more competition and investment, and (ii) the duty to deal of anti-trust law from the viewpoint of transaction cost economics and relational contracting. On the second issue, we investigated (i) liberalization of Romanian railways under enlargement of EU, (ii) efficiency of Romanian railways, (iii) regulation and efficiency of the UK railways, and (iv) the effect of disused train lines on the regional economy in Japan.We have pointed out that the vertical separation can be effective means to induce more competition and necassary investment of the various network industries, whereas vertical separation has not been employed in the privatization of Japanese network industries, and so the competition work less in Japan than in EU countries. We also scrutinized the vertical separation of railway industry of UK and Romania where vertical separation works. We gave the summary of the history of vertical separation and current problems of railways in UK and Romania, and also did quantitative research of production efficiency after privatization. Finally, we did a case study of the economic effect of disused train lines in Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan.Furthermore, we published two books "Competition: Strategy and Policy" and "Introduction to Microeconomics for Business and Public Policy," based on our research efforts.