An Assessment of Telecommunications Regulation Performance in the European Union

We assess the performance of National Regulatory Authorities across 16 EU countries regarding economic regulation in telecommunications sector, by constructing a so-called Composite Regulatory Performance Indicator for regulatory aspects such as effectiveness of the national regulatory system, effectiveness of the dispute settlement body, general market access conditions and application of remedies in markets for narrowband voice, mobile, broadband and business services. This composite indicator is the output measure used in the DEA non-parametric approach. The computation of efficiency scores allows to rank the NRAs and to detect some room for improvement in terms of efficiency gains for each national authority.technical efficiency; DEA; telecommunications; regulated industries; National Regulatory Authorities; European Union.

Investment in Next Generation Networks and the Role of Regulation: A Real Option Approach

The current regulatory debate in the telecommunications industry in Europe and elsewhere is dominated by the issue of if and how to regulate next generation networks (NGN) which operators plan to roll out in the near future. The crucial issue is whether an extension of current regulatory obligations onto future networks would hamper the investment by large European operators. The paper applies a real option model to explain the investment decision in next generation networks. One important result of the model is that regulation affects the investment decision only in the initial period when uncertainty is still very high. The real option model has been calibrated with parameters drawn from real data for a new entrant and from educated estimates for an established operator. Four different regulatory regimes and their impact on the timing of the investments have been simulated: a temporary regulatory holiday is shown to be an effective regulatory tool in order to induce immediate investments.real options; telecommunication; regulated industries; Next Generation Networks.

Public Services Efficiency Provision in Italian Regions: a Non-Parametric Analysis

We measure the performance of public spending in Italian regions regarding the provision of public services, by constructing a so-called total regional performance indicator for strategic sectors such as general administration, energy, water and sewage, solid waste, and transports for 2001. This composite indicator is then the output measure selected to assess expenditure efficiency for the Italian regions, using the non-parametric DEA approach. The computation of efficiency scores allows to rank the regions and to detect some room for improvement in terms of efficiency gains at the regional level

Regulation performance and investment in telecommunications in the European Union : a policy evaluation approach

According to the European Regulatory Framework in Telecommunications sector, one of the main tasks required from the NRAs is to promote efficient investment and innovation in the field. The aim of this paper is to estimate the relevance of regulation for the growth of investment across 16 EU Countries. This is done estimating how regulation affects revenues and investment elasticity to incumbents’ market power. To do so, we use the panel structure of our data and the timing of the introduction of regulation to carry out two “quasi experiments”, where incumbents are ideally splitted in two groups, according to whether they are subject to a specific regulation or not. We consider a sample of 16 EU countries from 1997 to 2011. The results seem to to suggest that New Regulatory Framework has little reduced the impact of market share on firm’s revenues and investment in the recent years. Over a longer time span instead, being a regulated country does not imply lower revenues and investment by telecommunication companies. Instead, in regulated countries it is likely that the telecom sector benefits from a better economic and institutional environment, which makes firms more productive for a given level of market power. Finally, in countries with a long-lasting regulatory tradition, an increase in market share represents a more significant increase in firm’s market power than in a nonregulated country, so that in regulated countries, elasticity of investment to market share turns to be higher.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An Assessment of Telecommunications Regulation Performance in the European Union

We assess the performance of National Regulatory Authorities across 16 EU countries regarding economic regulation in telecommunications sector, by constructing a so-called Composite Regulatory Performance Indicator for regulatory aspects such as effectiveness of the national regulatory system, effectiveness of the dispute settlement body, general market access conditions and application of remedies in markets for narrowband voice, mobile, broadband and business services. This composite indicator is the output measure used in the DEA non-parametric approach. The computation of efficiency scores allows to rank the NRAs and to detect some room for improvement in terms of efficiency gains for each national authority

Investment in Next Generation Networks and the Role of Regulation: A Real Option Approach

The current regulatory debate in the telecommunications industry in Europe and elsewhere is dominated by the issue of if and how to regulate next generation networks (NGN) which operators plan to roll out in the near future. The crucial issue is whether an extension of current regulatory obligations onto future networks would hamper the investment by large European operators. The paper applies a real option model to explain the investment decision in next generation networks. One important result of the model is that regulation affects the investment decision only in the initial period when uncertainty is still very high. The real option model has been calibrated with parameters drawn from real data for a new entrant and from educated estimates for an established operator. Four different regulatory regimes and their impact on the timing of the investments have been simulated: a temporary regulatory holiday is shown to be an effective regulatory tool in order to induce immediate investments

Transparency, quality of institutions and performance in the Italian Municipalities

In this paper, we aim at evaluating from an economic perspective the recent Italian legislation on transparency to investigate whether the potentialities of transparency as a tool to improve performance and integrity are fully exploited. We first construct a synthetic indicator (CTI) consisting of two sub-indicators, CTI Integrity and CTI Performance, which are able to describe in numerical terms the overall degree of transparency of Italian public administrations as well as the two different aspects of the public activity’s transparency. Then, using as a sample of Italian municipalities, we address the question whether there is a relation between the fulfillment of transparency obligations and both the institutional quality and the performance of the public administration activity. Our preliminary results suggest that our transparency indicators show a satisfactory correlation with widely used measures of the quality of institutions as well as with the official data on municipalities public spending performance.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Network Building Capacity of Tourist Districts: An Application to the Apulian Case

The research reported in this study sought to determine whether successful tourist destinations can build a «network» on the basis of their attractiveness. To this end, we conducted a social network analysis with municipalities as network nodes and edges representing the natural, economic, social, and public institutional dimensions, reduced to a composite attractiveness indicator (CAI). Although easily replicable in other contexts, our methodology was tested on two Apulian areas in Southern Italy, Gargano and Salento, which are legally designated as tourist districts. The analysis emphasizes that these districts are still unable to construct a system despite strong potential in terms of attractiveness

Over The Top: le nuove multinazionali del web. Lo strano caso delle multinazionali digitali: la virtualizzazione della delocalizzazione

Gli eventi degli ultimi anni pongono diversi interrogativi su come lo sviluppo di Internet e dell’intera filiera digitale possa essere efficacemente impiegato per aiutare il policy maker a coniugare una realtà profondamente dinamica e complessa con le politiche per la crescita. La recente crisi economica ha confermato l’importanza dell’intervento pubblico nella ridefinizione delle strategie volte a sostenere investimenti ed occupazione. Il punto centrale è capire quale possa essere il ruolo dell’ecosistema-digitale in generale e di alcuni attori in particolare in questo ambito. Il volume intende offrire spunti di riflessione su quest’ultimo aspetto ed aprire una finestra su una realtà in profondo mutamento. L’analisi proposta considera, non solo gli aspetti puramente economicofinanziari delle strategie dei nuovi attori “sopra la rete” (i cosiddetti Over-The-Top), ma anche le loro modalità di internazionalizzazione, inserendosi nel più ampio tema delle scelte di localizzazione delle attività innovative delle imprese multinazionali, concentrandosi sulle relazioni che si vengono a formare tra queste e il territorio in cui vanno ad operare. Si intende, in questo modo, offrire al lettore una diversa prospettiva, quella multinazionale appunto, nella ricostruzione sistematica di quanto è avvenuto ed una opportunità di riflessione su quanto ancora ci sia da fare per costruire una politica industriale digitale più adeguata. L’ecosistema digitale sta, infatti, cambiando ancora, aprendo una nuova fase, in cui la catena del valore di Internet sta mutando in una catena del valore dei dati personali, i Big Data. I nuovi software (le cosiddette Apps), utilizzabili attraverso i device mobili e più abili nel catturare questo tipo di informazioni, stanno modificando completamente l’aspetto geo-politico dell’economia digitale. In questo nuovo assetto, l’Italia, così come altre realtà europee, testimoniano una nuova vitalità e storie di successo, inducendo a pensare che presto si possa raccontare un’altra “economia digitale”, più ancorata ai territori locali con “ricadute reali” maggiori, rispetto a quanto non sia accaduto nel recente passato.The events of recent years pose several questions on how the development of the Internet and digital entire supply chain can be useful to help policy makers to combine such a profoundly dynamic and complex reality with the policies for growth. The current economic crisis has confirmed the importance of public intervention in the redefinition of strategies to support investment and employment. The central point is to understand what could be the role of the digital ecosystem, in general and of some specific stakeholders, in particular. The book aims at providing insights on the latter aspect and open a window on a profound change in reality. The proposed analysis considers not only the purely financial aspects of the strategies of the new players "over the net" (so-called Over-The-Top), but also their mode of internationalization, fitting into the broader theme of international delocalization of innovative activities. The focus is on the relationships between the digital multinational enterprises and the territory in which they operate. The purpose is to offer the reader, (through the systematic reconstruction of what happened) a different perspective, a multinational precisely, and an opportunity to reflect on how much more there is to do in order to build up a digital industrial policy. The digital ecosystem is still changing, opening a new phase, in which the value chain of the Internet is turning into a value chain of personal data, Big Data. The new softwares (called Apps) are completely changing the geopolitical aspect of the digital economy, because they are able to capture better the individual information through mobile devices. In this new framework, Italy, as well as other European Countries, shows a new vitality and success stories, leading to think that soon we can tell another "digital economy", more anchored in the local territories with more "real impact", compared to what happened in the recent past

La fiscalità delle «multinazionali digitali»: il caso italiano

In soli 20 anni, Internet è cresciuta fino a diventare strategica sia per la crescita economica di molti Paesi che per la vita quotidiana di miliardi di persone (OECD, 2011). Il mondo di Internet che conosciamo ad oggi si configura, infatti, sempre più, come un prodotto di rete il cui valore dell’infrastruttura cresce per l’utente finale all’aumentare del numero di persone che essa permette di raggiungere e la cui natura profondamente dinamica e complessa coinvolge moltissimi soggetti, con finalità e strategie economiche differenti dell’ecosistema digitale. In questo contesto, si inserisce la presente analisi, volta ad affrontare il tema della fiscalità digitale, focalizzandosi sulle scelte strategiche operate in questo ambito da alcuni dei principali attori che compongono il nuovo segmento della filiera digitale: i cosiddetti operatori «sopra la rete» Over - The - Top (OTT ) e di alcuni player IT e produttori di device globali, operanti nello stesso segmento di mercato. L’analisi condotta su un campione di 10 tra i maggiori operatori ricorre alla metodologia delle aliquote implicite ex post, calcolate sul profitto lordo, il totale delle attività e il fatturato. Tale approccio è in linea con i risultati evidenziati dalla letteratura empirica sulle multinazionali, dal momento che gli indicatori di profitto delle imprese digitali tendono ad essere estremamente eterogenei fra loro e fanno pensare ad un «segnale» di comportamento di profit shifting (Scaglioni, 2013). L’obiettivo è, dunque, verificare se la delocalizzazione effettuata in Italia abbia o meno una modalità di natura «finanziaria» e non «reale», nel senso che la filiale estera viene insediata per mero arbitraggio fiscale e non per scopi industriali.The world of Internet we know today is increasingly becoming a reality multi - network, multi - service, multi - platform, i.e. a product of the network whose characteristic element is that the value of the infrastructure grows for the final user as the number of people it can reach, and the dynamic and complex nature of which deeply involves many parties with different economic objectives and strategies of the Digital ecosystem. In 20 years, Internet has grown to become critical for the economic growth conditions in many countries and for the daily lives of billions of people (OECD, 2011). In this context, the present analysis aims at tackling the issue of digital taxation, focusing on the strategic choices made in this area by some of the leading actors that make up the new segment of the digital eco - system, the so - called Over - The - Top (OTT ) and some IT players and manufacturers of digital devices, their direct competitors in the global OTT market. The analysis conducted on a sample of 10 major operators develops the ex post implicit tax rates approach, calculated on the gross profit, total assets and revenues, in line with the results shown by the empirical literature on multinationals, since corporate profit indicators also in the case of digital multinational firms tend to be extremely heterogeneous between them and suggesta «signal» of profit shifting behavior (Scaglioni, 2013). The goal, then, is to investigate whether or not the delocalization in Italy, but it could be the case of any other country with high legal tax rates, is just «financial» and not «real» in the sense that the foreign subsidiary is established for mere tax arbitrage and not with developing intents