Recent advances in telecommunications, particularly using fibre technologies, permit many services based on data-processing to be performed anywhere in the world. They thus become tradable and subject to the laws of comparative advantage. A good example is data-processing within large...

The European Commission's proposal for a Directive on the award of concession contracts has sparked vigorous public debate and intense opposition. This Directive is controversial because of the nature of the policy it proposes and because the sectors involved are highly sensitive. This Forum...

Recent advances in telecommunications, particularly using fibre technologies, permit many services based on data-processing to be performed anywhere in the world. They thus become tradable and subject to the laws of comparative advantage. A good example is data-processing within large...

The risk that a two-sided market with strong indirect network effects may tip into a monopoly is well-known. The questions of whether this will happen in practice, whether this creates problems, and if so what can be done to address those problems, are less well investigated. This paper...

We study the impact of auction design on the final prices paid by telecommunications operators for the past two decades across the world. Our empirical strategy combines information about competition in the local market, the level of adoption and a wide range of socio-economic indicators. Using...

Regulation in Europe has rested heavily on the historic monopolist asymmetrically providing its competitors with access to its own copper local loop. When the regulation of fibre loops was contemplated, the European Commission initially proposed in 2008 that Next Generation Access (NGA)...

There is much recent debate about extending the purposes of investor-owned firms to embrace the wider interests of a variety of stakeholders. Network regulatory decisions already involve extensive use of centralised social cost-benefit analysis to capture some aspects of public value. A gap...

Our paper seeks to define the term effective competition as used in Mexico’s telecommunications sector and implemented through two main regulatory tools: the determination of preponderance and the subsequent imposition of asymmetric measures. To lift, modify or deepen these measures, we argue,...