This research aims at incorporating the political environment in the process of policy making such as regulation and competition policy.  The normative effects of these policies on market outcomes have been widely analyzed, both theoretically and empirically.  To understand their impact on market outcomes, however, it is important to consider the underlying forces that determine how they are chosen, such as institutions, the electoral process, and lobbying.  It therefore requires simultaneously endogenizing the determinants and the effects of the political decision making processes.  This is achieved by combing industrial organization analysis with aspects of political economy.  In particular, there are currently four areas that are being investigated within this approach:

• price and entry regulation of markets
• the use of efficiency defense in merger control
• the political economy of merger control
• the political economy of antitrust