The decision-making process in state utility commissions is best described as "regulatory impressionism." Working in concert with longstanding notions of judicial deference, the existence of regulatory impressionism has far-reaching implications for the move towards a competitive marketplace in...

The American copyright system separately protects the sounds in music recordings and the words and music of the underlying musical composition upon which they are based; separate rights are further defined for the reproduction and public performance of both the recording and the composition. The...

This paper reviews in turn the papers in this Symposium on incentive regulation. It adduces the UK experience with incentive regulation, particularly in the electricity sector, to evaluate, amongst other things, the reasons for development and adoption of this approach, the determinants of...

We synthesize the results of the recent theoretical literature on the determination of interchange fees by payment card associations. We analyze in particular the conditions under which these interchange fees are excessively high, as compared with social optimum. These conditions involve several...

Since the 1990s, local exchange telecommunications carriers (LECs) have been subject to incentive regulation plans. This paper discusses theoretical and practical aspects of the evolution of price regulation as retail competition increases and as regulators mandate extensive availability of...

The paper investigates, in a non-technical fashion, the economic determinants of interchange fees in payment card systems and the potential need for their regulation. Among other things, it demonstrates that the proposal for a cost-based regulation of interchange fees relies on an erroneous,...

Significant attention worldwide has been paid to the regulation of credit card interchange fees. In part, this attention has followed concerns expressed about the level of these fees in Europe, the U.S. and Australia. The Reserve Bank of Australia recently conducted an extensive inquiry into the...

We trace the development of incentive regulation in the U.S. telecommunications, electricity, and natural gas industries. Telecom has moved much more in the direction of pure price cap regulation. Incentive regulation in electricity and gas has generally not strayed far from rate-ofreturn...

Restructuring brings market incentives into formerly monopolized network industries and raises a host of questions about whether the carrot of profit seeking can be disciplined by the stick of competition. In the telephone industry access pricing is an issue, and major problems are illustrated....

Incumbent telecommunications carriers have been mandated to share their networks with new retail service providers at regulated wholesale rates. This regulatory structure creates options which incumbent systems must write and which all potential entrants are awarded at a price of zero. Intense...