Innovationswirkung der Netzneutralität: statische und dynamische Effekte der Ausgestaltung von Priorisierungsregimen

Regeln zur Netzneutralität werden sowohl in Europa als auch in den USA intensiv diskutiert. Die Arbeit untersucht die ökonomischen Aspekte möglicher Priorisierungsregimen. Basierend auf Erkenntnissen der Theorie der zweiseitigen Märkte und der Industrieökonomik werden allgemeine Aussagen zu möglichen Regulierungsansätzen entwickelt, und es wird gezeigt, welche Implikationen sie für die innerhalb der theoretischen Literatur verwendeten Netzneutralitätsoperationalisierungen besitzen. Ein summarischer Überblick über die vorhandenen Modelle dient zur Herleitung von Folgerungen für eine angemessene Regulierung. Innovationspolitischen Aspekte des Themas werden gesondert untersucht. Die Autorin differenziert zwischen der Wirkung der Netzneutralität auf Innovationsanreize und Innovationsfähigkeit der einzelnen Marktteilnehmer und den einzelnen Innovationsphasen.The Thesis presents different approaches to define network neutrality and their relationship to economic and technical arguments for more discerning treatments of data than mere best effort FiFo. Efficiency arguments for congestion management are analyzed with a focus on empirical trends in internet infrastructure and usage growth. Despite a parallel trend, the addition of bandwidth is no solution for short term usage-peaks which decrease the performance of delay sensitive applications, quality of service minimizes the cost of congestion episodes. Both techniques are essential to optimize performance in the long run. From an economic point of view, the theory of two-sided markets provides strong arguments against a zero price rule. A ban on \emph{access tiering} restricts the ability of internet service providers as platform providers to internalize indirect network effects by choosing the optimal price structure. The analysis of the competition aspect of network neutrality with special regard to the dangers of vertical integration indicates that scenarios in which internet service providers foreclose rivals or charge supra competitive prices do exist. But, they are no reason to introduce neutrality regulation because existing legislation is covering them already. Thus while two-sided market theory actively cautions against zero price rules, the the literature on industrial organization seems to counsel against a general prohibition of vertical integration and prohibitions against quality or price differentiation. Those theoretical conclusions are supplemented by an in depth look at the literature modeling net neutrality. The fact that most of the papers use different assumptions concerning the number of internet service providers, content providers and end users, the possibility and effect of multihoming, even different definitions and consequently different operationalizations of network neutrality is seen as an advantage. It allows to test the robustness of the conclusions on the effect of network neutrality on congestion, investment levels, the number of content providers which serves as a proxy for innovation, welfare in general and its constituents (consumer rents, and internet service provider/content providers-profits). The analysis of the effect of the prioritization regime on innovation first establishes a guesstimate of the magnitude of the effects. Starting from the effect of information and communication technology in general and the impact of the internet on BIP-growth I try to narrow down the effect of the InternetÔs data transmission protocols by identifying possible chains of casualty between innovation inputs, activities, outputs, and impacts and the Internet analyzing the importance of neutral data transmission for each one in turn. This analysis is contrasted with the engineering view on the importance of open protocols and their impact as well as a throughout overview of the literature on the topic and an in depth look at the InternetÔs impact on the global determinants of innovation: technology, demand, innovation-systems and competition. The main contribution of the analysis lies in the the fact that each innovation phase (invention, innovation, diffusion) is analyzed separately, the overall impact of the prioritization regime is understood als the sum of effects during the different phases of the innovation cycle, which makes quantification challenging and cautions against conclusions drawn form the impact of net neutrality on a single phase