A fundamental policy in the European regulatory framework has been the unbundled access to the local loop of the fixed incumbent operator. European legislation regarding local loop unbundling (LLU) was introduced in 2000 before the adoption of the New Regulatory Framework in 2002. Hence,...

This paper studies how the political influence of consumer groups and firms affects the behavior of state regulators and in turn the effectiveness of federal policies. We employ a unique granular data set for U.S. local telephone markets to examine empirically differences in state and intrastate...