This paper addresses the impact on investment incentives of the network sharing arrangements mandated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, with a focus on the implications of irreversible investment. Although the goal is to promote competition, the sharing rules now in place reduce incentives...

The COVID-19 pandemic initiated a trend in "work-from-home (WFH)," but workers need reliable and fast internet connections (e.g., broadband) to work from home. Yet, as of January 2020, 18 states had legally restricted local governments and cooperatives from building their own broadband...

We study trade-offs faced by multiple-system operators (MSOs), the gatekeepers in the provision of internet service, when setting prices and quality for internet access and TV service. In response to improvements in over-the-top video (OTT), MSOs choose between accommodating OTT to share in the...

This paper identifies problems with the ordered breakup of Microsoft that seem to have been completely overlooked by the government, the judge, and the commentators. The breakup order prohibits Bill Gates and other large Microsoft shareholders from owning shares in both of the companies that...

We investigate a sample of firms whose number of reported segments falls by one or more for the first time in their reporting history. The firms in our sample have a significantly larger diversification discount, underperform, and underinvest relative to comparable firms. Firms are more likely...

This paper evaluates the importance of property rights institutions', which protect citizens against expropriation by the government and powerful elites, and contracting institutions', which enable private contracts between citizens. We exploit exogenous variation in both types of institutions...

This paper formulates a multiproduct structural model to examine the evolution of the structure of production and demand and the dynamic interaction between the two in the context of the U.S. telecommunications industry over an extended period, from 1935 to 1987. We estimate the degree of scale...

In 1997, France T‚l‚com, the state-owned French telephone company, went through a partial privatization. The government offered current and prior France T‚l‚com employees the opportunity to buy portfolios of shares with various combinations of discounts, required holding periods,...

We study the trade-offs faced by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that serve as platforms through which consumers access both television and internet services. As online streaming video improves, these providers may respond by attempting to steer consumers away from streaming video toward their...

The fundamental unit of production in microeconomics is the firm, and this mirrors reality in the United States and United Kingdom. But elsewhere, business groups can be the more important unit, for business strategy is often formulated at the business group level, not the firm level. In many...