3,971 research outputs found

    Governing the Networks of the Information Society. Prospects and limits of policy in a complex technical system

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    This paper examines the prospects and limits of policies towards information and communications technologies (ICTs). The co-evolution of technological, economic, and political factors that has affected the information network infrastructure during the past three decades has transformed it from a relatively closed to more open system. As a consequence, the degree of complexity of the ICT infrastructure has increased with far-reaching implications for its governance. Paradoxically, policy was better able to control important performance characteristics, such as prices or investment levels, during the past monopoly era. However, the ability to control came at the high price of the inefficiencies associated with monopoly organization. In the present more competitive framework, many feasible policy instruments only work indirectly. Sector performance is an emergent property resulting from decentralized decisions in markets. It is influenced but not fully determined by policy choices. These changes need to be recognized more explicitly in the theoretical foundations, the formation and the implementation of policy. Applying concepts from the theory of complex evolving systems, the paper develops lessons for the design of effective information and communications policy.Information and communication technology, governance, complexity, incomplete information, institutions, feasible policy

    A New View of Scale and Scope in the Telecommunications Industry: Implications for Competition and Innovation

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    Telecommunication economic analysis has largely relied upon a conventional economic framework that has its roots in neoclassical analysis that emerged almost a hundred years ago, and has contributed to reshaping the direction of economic policies by attacking the premises of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, and providing far greater leeway to incumbents, as well as challenging the economic efficiency of new entrants. Common approaches based upon a large number of simplifying assumptions that include,for instance, the idea that the technology is exogenous. Such hypotheses make little sense at a conceptual level. In addition, this idea is largely contradicted by the short period during which the sector achieved some level of competition around the 1900's and 2000. Not only have economists not thought about any number of such hypotheses, but they have also failed to consider how they might have an impact on their analysis. Evaluating a number of such issues in this paper, we are able to show how conventional economic analysis, uncritically applied to the sector, contributed to the undoing of the 1996 Telecommunications Act and of much of the competition it helped facilitate.scale and scope; competition; telecommunications industry structure

    Inter-firm Alliances during Pre-standardization in ICT

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    alliances, ICT, standardization

    Economic and Political Consequences of the 1996 Telecommunications Act

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    See Crandall and Hazlett for a more recent analysis. This paper investigates the economic and political consequences of the 1996 Telecommunications Act by examining relevant marketplace data. In key segments of the telephone and cable television industries, the reform appears to be encouraging competition. Interestingly, stock price data indicate that the wave of "mega-mergers" in telecommunications, an unannounced and possibly unanticipated result of the Telecommunications Act, appears to be associated with consumer benefits. These improvements in competitiveness are modest by some standards, but impressive when judged against the results of other legislation with the announced goal of increasing market rivalry (e.g., the 1984 and 1992 Cable Acts). Federal policy makers also appear to be reaping benefits from the Telecommunications Act. The "deregulation"-which very cautiously opened markets, mandating extensive FCC rulemaking in the transition to competition-is associated with a sharp increase in political contributions to federal policymakers from telecommunications firms and executives. This is seen as an intended consequence of the act's major reform: Removing policy jurisdiction from Judge Harold Green's divestiture oversight and placing it in the hands of the Federal Communications Commission, a regulatory agency answerable to Congress.
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