During the last two decades, bundling has become a hot topic for Industrial Organization economists, mainly as a result of legal actions against Microsoft (Crampes and Hollander 2007). In this spirit, the literature has thus far focused on asymmetric settings where one firm holds a monopoly for...

Marsden explains for a general policy audience what the regulatory and governance problems and potential solutions are for the issue referred to as ‘network neutrality’, unpacking its ‘lite’ and ‘heavy’ elements. Eschewing technical, economic or legalistic explanations which he has...

The purpose of the paper is to identify global best practice in the regulation of quality of service on cellular wireless networks. Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents an identification of issues from the literature and an analysis of examples of activities of regulators around the...

Under EU Air Passenger Rights legislation (“EC261”), carriers must provide assistance and cash compensation to passengers in case of long delay. We study whether the regulation reduces flight delay. EC261 applies uniformly to flights departing from the EU, but covers only EU carriers on...

Network trouble reports provide a proxy measure of service quality and network reliability. This paper analyzes the influence of local competition, state-level regulation, new technologies, automation, and mergers on RBOC reports of network trouble. Service quality discrimination between...

Investigations into the causes and effects of parallel importing have concentrated on price discrimination, but arbitrage can also occur on non-price dimensions. Using a natural experiment in the New Zealand film distribution industry between May 1998 and November 2001, we examine the effect of...

Many legal jurisdictions, including the U.S. and U.K., have passed regulations to address the potential negative impacts of a lack of competition and high concentration in public company audit markets. One consequence of increased regulations, desired or not, is that they have presumably...

This article examines the private mechanisms used to safeguard quality in auditing, with a view to defining rules capable of facilitating the performance of market forces. An outline is given of a general theory of private quality assurance in auditing, based on the use of quasi-rents to...

A specific EU model for national regulatory authorities (NRAs) has evolved in the course of the liberalization processes in network industries (electronic communications, energy and others). It rests on two broad lines: NRAs are independent and accountable. The CERRE Report on Independence and...

This article compares mobile quality of service (QoS) regulation in Ghana, United Kingdom and Nigeria with the aim of deriving any applicable lessons from the two jurisdictions to improve Nigerian practice. Its scope is restricted to comparison of mobile QoS regulation under existing legal...