This paper explores the similarity of the underlying economic problems that lead to the establishment of (a) independent central banks to operate national monetary policies and (b) independent regulatory agencies for telecommunications and other utility service industries. We show that, in both...

This paper evaluates the main measures that have been used to regulate the interconnection prices in the telecommunication sector. We show that many of the regulations that are applying the vast majority of countries have very little theoretical support, and we identify the restrictions that...

This survey reviews the relationship between regulation and distribution, focusing on regulatory reform in developing countries. The characteristics of these countries impose constraints on appropriate regulatory policies. These constraints condition: i) the terms of the trade-off between firms'...

This paper presents new data on telecommunications reform for a cross section of countries. We measure telecommunications reform along two dimensions: entry barriers and regulatory independence. This data set is combined with a comprehensive set of performance, institutional and political data...

This study computes measures of the degree of independence in practice of telecommunications regulators for Latin American and Caribbean countries in a new data set for 23 countries between 1990 and 2004. We focus on the degree to which governments are able to commit to preserve regulator...

Regulatory independence has been proposed as a mechanism to alleviate the commitment problem associated with the sunk nature of investments in network industries. This paper summarizes the author's and others' work in this field (to take stock of several years of research) and, in addition,...

The economics of federalism is a broad discipline with more than five decades of experience. It may shed light on how regulatory jurisdiction is allocated in EU electricity and telecommunications markets. Specifically, this paper assesses the evolution of reform up to and including the third EU...