Telecommunications was the first network utility to be privatized in the United Kingdom. Drawing on 15 years'experience and discussion in the field, the author shows the economic principles of regulation in general and access pricing in particular that have been implemented. British...

This paper discusses possible remedies in the three mobile telephony markets defined in the EC Recommendation. For each market, the nature of the problem is first described, followed by the understanding of the potential market failures associated to that market. Finally, the optimal approach...

This article extends the literature on switching costs by considering what happens when retailers and manufacturers are separate entities and some customers are locked in with retailers. This separation introduces a dynamic inconsistency problem as manufacturers face the problem of extracting...

By any measure, the communication sector is important. It is no surprise, then, that the communication sector has attracted the attention of both policy-makers and economists. In this paper, we argue that four characteristics of the networks that deliver communication services make this area of...

We present a simple model where the growth of one downstream firm generates lower wholesale prices for this firm but higher wholesale prices for its competitors (the “waterbed effect”). We derive conditions for when, even though firms compete in strategic complements, this harms consumers....

We compare the advertising intensity and content of programming in a market with competing media platforms. With pay-tv, media platforms have two sources of revenues, advertising revenues and revenues from viewers. With free-to-air, media platforms receive all revenues from advertising. We show...