Agenda Archive

Reforming executive pay: taking the long view

February 2017

Executive compensation is an issue that all companies need to take seriously. The ‘extortionate’ levels of executive pay, seemingly disconnected from performance, have led to public distrust of business. Indeed, Donald Trump’s victory in the USA and the UK’s Brexit vote were, in part, protests by ordinary people against an out-of-touch elite. Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance at London Business School and Oxera Associate, considers how companies might redesign their compensation strategies not only to increase public trust, but also to create long-term value for shareholders

Mergers and innovation: fewer players, more ideas?

February 2017

Is market consolidation detrimental to innovation? Conversely, do mergers create benefits to society by increasing innovation that brings better outcomes for consumers? While merger assessment has historically focused on static price and cost effects, regulators are increasingly being asked to consider whether a transaction will create the right incentives for product development and innovation over a longer time horizon. The Oxera Economics Council met to discuss this topic in November 2016

Assessing state aid in the beautiful game

February 2017

As the old saying goes: ‘football is a funny old game’. Indeed, some characteristics of football clubs create specific challenges when applying the standard state aid frameworks to assess whether measures constitute aid and whether any aid is in line with state aid rules.

The costs and benefits of measuring the costs and benefits of competition policy

February 2017

Competition authorities around the world place great emphasis on measuring the effects of competition enforcement. In part, this is to justify to the public, and policymakers, that competition policy is desirable from a social welfare perspective. But are there costs as well as benefits to trying to measure the costs and benefits of competition policy interventions?