The review of the Universal Service Obligation (USO) has recently been debated in the European Union (EU). Under discussion there was the extension of the current universal service definition to include broadband access, for which some theoretical and empirical support exists. In fact the...

This paper studies the incentives of an unregulated monopolist to undertake the socially optimal investment in NGA networks when it takes into account the fact that the NGA deployment is a two-dimensional investment decision concerning both the quality (or equivalently, technology) and the...

We investigate the effects of alternative open access regimes on market performance. In particular, by means of an economic laboratory experiment we compare the market outcomes under unregulated wholesale competition, under a price-fixing rule (where firms must maintain their wholesale price for...

This paper analyzes the incentives to invest in Next Generation Access Networks (NGA) in a framework with horizontal product differentiation with price competition between an investing and an access seeking firm. Given uncertainty about the success of the NGA, I compare regulatory regimes with...

Regulatory forbearance is a controversial strategy for dealing with weak banks. We analyze forbearance regarding the disclosure of a bank's financial difficulties, using a case study of the financial crisis of the mortgage bank AHBR during the years 2001 to 2005. AHBR was one of the largest...