Augmenting consumer welfare was a key justification behind the reform of utilities from the 1980s. But three decades later, evidence is mounting that consumer satisfaction with household utilities is quite uneven. Moreover; governments, regulators, and international organizations are...

In the postal and telecommunications sectors, operators and users’ groups employ regulatory specialists to monitor policy developments and to attempt to influence the direction those developments take. Among the contacts with whom these regulatory specialists must, in doing so, engage, are...

The importance of efficient workings of network industries and the markets in which they operate has long been recognized in the literature. In a parallel fashion, policy makers around the world initiated various restructuring efforts focusing on these sectors. However, the issues of...

This paper argues that, despite important productivity gains, reforms have benefited consumers much less than expected in El Salvador. Antitrust legislation, consumer protection and an adequate regulation of privatized utilities are central ingredients of a successful market economy. Major...

This paper argues that, despite important productivity gains, reforms have benefited consumers much less than expected in El Salvador. Antitrust legislation, consumer protection and an adequate regulation of privatized utilities are central ingredients of a successful market economy. Major...

This paper argues that, despite important productivity gains, reforms have benefited consumers much less than expected in El Salvador. Antitrust legislation, consumer protection and an adequate regulation of privatized utilities are central ingredients of a successful market economy. Major...

Identifying whether hyperbolic advertising claims influence consumers is important for consumer protection, but differentiating mere "puffery" from misleading advertising is not straightforward. We conducted a pre-registered experiment to determine whether pseudo-technical advertising claims...