IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jcomle/v12y2016i3p465-476..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Partial Deregulation In Telecommunications: An Update

Author

Listed:
  • Jerry A. Hausman
  • William E. Taylor

Abstract

Paul MacAvoy asked, What is the escape from the situation in which industry growth is held back by the lack of competitive entry brought about by regulatory agencies ostensibly acting in the name of protecting consumers? In this article, we examine MacAvoy's prescient critiques of the failure of antitrust and regulation to produce competitive markets for telecommunications services. We explain how the real competition has come from new products and innovation. Market power in the short run is the incentive that drives investment in research and development, and, in telecommunications, it is a small price to pay for innovative new services. Unfortunately, the experience in telecommunications has been one of regulatory delay of implementing new services and technology to level some hypothetical playing field rather than rewarding innovation with a temporary market advantage. We suggest that technical change enhanced by benign regulatory neglect is the answer to MacAvoy's question. It is the escape from counterproductive regulation to control market power in telecommunications.

Suggested Citation

  • Jerry A. Hausman & William E. Taylor, 2016. "Partial Deregulation In Telecommunications: An Update," Journal of Competition Law and Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 12(3), pages 465-476.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jcomle:v:12:y:2016:i:3:p:465-476.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/joclec/nhw019
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L9 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities
    • L50 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - General
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation
    • L86 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jcomle:v:12:y:2016:i:3:p:465-476.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jcle .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.