This article summarizes recent judicial decisions of interest to energy lawyers. The authors review and comment on case law from the past year in several areas including: arbitration, bankruptcy and ...insolvency, class actions, competition law, contractual interpretation, cybersecurity, employment and labour, environment, Indigenous law, insurance law, securities litigation, and tax. The authors discuss the practical implications of the decisions and risk management strategies that May be of benefit to participants in the energy industry. The authors also highlight cases to watch in 2023.
At the time of the U.S.-Japan auto conferences in March 1983, the hoped-for economic recovery as manifested in auto sales had revealed itself quite modestly. Three months later, the indicators were ...more robust and certainly long overdue for those whose livelihood depends on the health of the industry--some of whom are university professors. With Japanese import restrictions in place until March 1984 and drastically reduced break-even points for domestic manufactures, rising consumer demand holds great promise for the industry. The rapidly rising stock prices of the auto-makers captures well the sense of heightened optimism, as do the various forecasts for improved profits. While the news is certainly welcome, it nevertheless should be greeted with caution. As Mr. Perkins noted at the conference, "we have a tendency to forget things very quickly. If we have a boom market this year, there is a good chance that a lot of things we learned will be forgotten." To put the matter differently and more bluntly, with growing prosperity there is the risk that management will fall back into old habits, making impossible the achievement of sustained quality and productivity improvement. Similarly, the commitment to develop cooperative relations with workers and suppliers will weaken. The union will be under membership pressure to retrieve concessions rather than to take the longer-term view. This longer-term view recognizes that "up-front increases" and adherence to existing work rules increasingly come at the sacrifice of future job security. Government policymakers will turn their attention away from the industry. This may not mean a great deal given how weakly focused their attentions has been during the last three years and how mixed and contradictory government auto policies have been for over a decade.
Geopolitical competition between the West and China is creating insecurity and development problems for the Pacific region. Western countries are responding to China's growing economic and political ...footprint with increased militarisation, the deployment of threat narratives and creation of a strategic alliance to engage with the Pacific Islands Forum. They want to retain strategic control of a region that is drawing closer to China, but at what cost for Pacific Islands countries? Emerging actors in the Pacific geopolitical space should understand the dynamics of this competition in order to make effective policies for the betterment of the region.
In the past 30 years, policy makers have argued that privatisation and deregulation of State-administered businesses, services and infrastructure leads to enhanced choice, competition and greater ...efficiency. Less clear is the question of how contestability theory has been used as a policy lens to understand and predict competition and firm behaviour in deregulated markets. To address this issue, I analyse the application of contestability theory to the Australian wheat export market.
This book dives into the legal and economic rationale of patent exhaustion, studying its evolution from the beginning in Germany, UK and USA, to Japan and 10 developing countries. The author also ...analyses exhaustion under TRIPS, GATT, GATS and major regional agreements, including the EU, before assessing the interface of patent exhaustion with competition policy. The book also addresses public policy concerns of Least developed and developing countries linked to their IPR challenges as IP users. It concludes that an appropriate exhaustion mode under relevant legal measures would protect patents while also restraining patents to become non-tariff barriers.
`I found myself questioning my current views on globalization and international competition. In so doing, I have come to a fuller understanding of the dynamics of the process and have enjoyed a ...unique view into the minds of the decision makers' -
Organization Studies
`This book is an unusual and valuable addition to the literatures of international business' -
International Business Review
`The first interesting feature of this study is the selection of industries... The book provides some valuable insight into the geographic distribution of the world in the mind of the chief executives. a matter of interest not only to industry and academia, but also to policy makers... The classification of international strategies deducted from the interview data is another contribution that book makes... The book has achieved its main goal of linking theory and practical experience and provides interesting reading... The book translates the logic of the industry world into a nice theory leaving it up to the reader to accept or reject the accompanying business ethics and values' -
Prometheus
`A highly effective analysis of the changing patterns of competition viewed from an international perspective. There is a plethora of books on globalization and internationalization of industries, but most are long on words and speculation, but short on hard evidence and perspective. Here, the approach of the authors is not to argue that the world is becoming more (or less) global, but to provide a valuable insight into just how these forces are shaping industries, whether managers can influence these forces and what they might mean for those involve'-
Charles Baden-Fuller, City Business School, Series Editor
This book uses in-depth current data from a range of international business, and provides an important new framework for understanding international competitive systems and formulating international business strategy.