In the summer of 1993, Australia's Trade Practices Commission was considering whether or not to permanently enjoin Santos Limited from acquiring SAGASCO Holdings Limited. This merger was potentially of enormous significance, since Santos was the largest and SAGASCO the third largest on-shore natural gas producer in Australia. SAGASCO, which was fighting the takeover, argued that the merger would significantly reduce competition in the natural gas market. Santos countered that the gas industry was highly concentrated already and had always been disciplined by competition from other fuels. This case is primarily intended to illustrate the analysis of the competitive effects of a merger, but it can also be used to discuss the relationship between competition policy and the regulation of natural monopolies. HKS Case Number 1484.0

In April 1983, the City and County of San Francisco and two irrigation districts in Merced and Stanislaus counties commissioned a feasibility study of their long-standing proposal to dam the Tuolumne River for power and water. At the same time, a coalition of environmentalists, rafters, fishing enthusiasts and California residents known as the Tuolumne River Preservation Trust was lobbying Congress to protect the river from further development under the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. The dam proponents had already produced several favorable cost-benefit studies of their proposal; in June 1983, the Trust asked economists at the Environmental Defense Fund to respond to those studies with an economic assessment of the proposed dam's environmental costs.This case is intended to provoke a discussion of how to place an economic value on environmental benefits that are seemingly intangible. The case calls particular attention to the measurement of user benefits, and the special problem of calculating the value placed by non-users on the sheer existence of an environmental asset ("existence value") and the option to use it someday ("option value"). Also relevant is the problem of discounting over the life of a long-term project. HKS Case Number 701.0.

In April 1983, the City and County of San Francisco and two irrigation districts in Merced and Stanislaus counties commissioned a feasibility study of their long-standing proposal to dam the Tuolumne River for power and water. At the same time, a coalition of environmentalists, rafters, fishing enthusiasts and California residents known as the Tuolumne River Preservation Trust was lobbying Congress to protect the river from further development under the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. The dam proponents had already produced several favorable cost-benefit studies of their proposal; in June 1983, the Trust asked economists at the Environmental Defense Fund to respond to those studies with an economic assessment of the proposed dam's environmental costs.This case is intended to provoke a discussion of how to place an economic value on environmental benefits that are seemingly intangible. The case calls particular attention to the measurement of user benefits, and the special problem of calculating the value placed by non-users on the sheer existence of an environmental asset ("existence value") and the option to use it someday ("option value"). Also relevant is the problem of discounting over the life of a long-term project. HKS Case Number 701.1.

The ability of commercial airlines to fly their planes means little without a space in which to land them. In some congested US airports, the times and spots for landing are known as "landing slots" and have been assigned to airlines at the nation's four busiest airports since 1969. For the first decade of this slot system, assignments were made with little controversy by the airline industry committee. Airline deregulation, however, increased demand for slots in the 1980s and vastly increased pressure on the committees apportioning the slots. An idea emerged to resolve competing demands: the FAA could create a market for landing slots and allow demand to set the price and ration the resource. This case tells the story of Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole's deliberations over whether to create a landing slot market. It describes options ranging from auction to "grandfathering," allowing airlines that had based investment decisions on a stockpile of slots to avoid corporate disruption. The case raises issues concerning the appropriateness of a market for allocating resources where concerns other than sheer efficiency are important. It illustrates, too, the difficulties in designing a policy that will allow for transition from one system to another. It has been used in an intermediate microeconomics curriculum to illustrate market operations issues. There is an epilogue for this case. HKS Case Number 781.0.

The ability of commercial airlines to fly their planes means little without a space in which to land them. In some congested US airports, the times and spots for landing are known as "landing slots" and have been assigned to airlines at the nation's four busiest airports since 1969. For the first decade of this slot system, assignments were made with little controversy by the airline industry committee. Airline deregulation, however, increased demand for slots in the 1980s and vastly increased pressure on the committees apportioning the slots. An idea emerged to resolve competing demands: the FAA could create a market for landing slots and allow demand to set the price and ration the resource. This case tells the story of Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole's deliberations over whether to create a landing slot market. It describes options ranging from auction to "grandfathering," allowing airlines that had based investment decisions on a stockpile of slots to avoid corporate disruption. The case raises issues concerning the appropriateness of a market for allocating resources where concerns other than sheer efficiency are important. It illustrates, too, the difficulties in designing a policy that will allow for transition from one system to another. It has been used in an intermediate microeconomics curriculum to illustrate market operations issues. This is the epilogue to case HKS818. HKS Case Number 781.1.

This case is designed to support a discussion of how to apply an economic evaluation of the appropriate level of control of an externality to a real problem with incomplete information of uncertain quality and high political stakes. It sketches the Reagan administration's stance on the issue, explains how regional interests have divided Congress on the desirability of acid rain control legislation, and presents the essential details of a House bill widely felt to have some credibility and political potential. Congressional estimates of the costs of attaining the several different levels of acid rain control possible under the House bill, by several different control methods, are presented and compared to administration estimates of the cost of acid rain damage to agriculture, forests, materials, and lakes. HKS Case Number 699.0