2005 Media Releases
Monday, 22 August 2005
Conference reveals all about competition and collusion in business
What are the best models for analysing industry in the 21st century? How do you design competition policy for telecommunications, the internet and energy sectors such as electricity and gas? And what are the best methods for assessing the anti -competitive and other effects of mergers?
These are just three of many issues to be discussed by world-ranking academics and experts in Australian competition policy at the Industry Economics Conference at Melbourne’s La Trobe University from 29 to 30 September 2005.
Conference organiser, Dr David Prentice, from La Trobe University’s School of Business, says a highlight of the event for anyone interested in economic policy will be a special panel session dealing with ‘Economic issues in the privatisation of Telstra’.
Two other panel sessions will deal with ‘Empirical merger analysis by competition authorities’ and ‘Evaluating the outcomes of creating markets in water, electricity and telecommunications’. Speakers will be from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), CRA International (formerly NECG), Commonwealth Bank and New Zealand’s Commerce Commission.
Four international keynote speakers at the conference will be:
Professor John Sutton from the London School of Economics, one of the leading researchers in theoretical and empirical industrial organisation over the last twenty years;
Professor Patrick Rey, University of Toulouse I, who has specialised in competition policy in network industries, including telecommunications and the Internet;
Professor Michael Waterson, University of Warwick, whose most recent research has been on strategic location decisions for fast food retailing and supply competition in electricity and gas in the UK; and
Dr Serge Moresi, Director of Competition Modelling at CRA International, who has extensively analysed vertically related industries, including constructing simulation models of mergers.
About 30 papers will be presented, with speakers from the public and private sectors and universities.
The conference is sponsored by La Trobe University, ACCC, CRA International, the Productivity Commission and the University of Melbourne.
It will be opened by the Vice-Chancellor of La Trobe University, Professor Michael Osborne.
For further details please see website www.latrobe.edu.au/iec2005 or from Dr David Prentice, tel: 61 3 94791482 or email: iec2005@latrobe.edu.au.