This paper gives a survey of the current state of competition in the German Broadband access market. Existing regulations and their impact on the deployment of high-speed Internet access are evaluated. It is argued that facilities-based competition is preferable to open-network regulations. The...

In this paper, we examine welfare implications of switching from a neutrality regime to a network management regime. While in the former a network provider or an integrated ISP should transmit data with a-bit-is-a-bit principle, in the latter it is allowed to differentiate its connection quality...

Many networks such as the Internet have been found to possess scale-free and small-world network properties reflected by so-called power law distributions. Scale-free properties evolve in large complex networks through self-organizing processes and more specifically, preferential attachment. New...

This paper studies the impact of physical distance and different relational proximity types on the formation of the Internet infrastructure. Although there is some anecdotal evidence on the 'end of geography' effect of the Internet, the relationship between physical space and the Internet has...

Given the quality of the available data on Internet access across several countries, it is necessary to evaluate alternative measures to assess the effect of Internet access on economic outcomes. The research at hand builds up on an earlier paper, which introduced a novel measure of Internet...

The internet giants - Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google, among others - have transformed society with both positive and negative effects. The negative effects have been stark. There have been huge disruptions caused by e-commerce. More recently, subtler, but even more serious negative effects...

To identify the determinants of cross-country disparities in personal computer and Internet penetration, we examine a panel of 161 countries over the 1999-2001 period. Our candidate variables include economic variables (income per capita, years of schooling, illiteracy, trade openness),...

Computer and Internet use, especially in developing countries, has expanded rapidly in recent years. Even in light of this expansion in technology adoption rates, penetration rates differ markedly between developed and developing countries and across developing countries. To identify the...

The significant increase of internet traffic is to a large extent caused by more high-data-rate applications like file-sharing etc. Although network operators constantly increase router and line capacities, overload occurs from time to time, causing delays, jitter and packet-losses at the data...

This study analyzes the geographic spread of commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs), the leading suppliers of Internet access. The geographic spread of ISPs is a key consideration in U.S. policy for universal access. We examine the Fall of 1998, a time of minimal government subsidy, when...