Suchergebnisse

Lost Glory assesses the role of industrial performance as a source of sustainable growth in India. The book provides a detailed historical description of the intellectual origins of India's modern industrial economy, conclusions on policies implemented, and a set of key suggestions for revival of sustainable growth.

This article reports an evaluation of the impact of horizontal ownership concentration on communications sector access pricing outcomes. Detailed historical data of postacquisition impacts on firms' access revenue outcomes have enabled analysis for the entire local exchange sector of the United States telecommunications industry. The findings are (1) the sector's horizontal ownership concentration process has caused key access-providing firms' average access revenue ratios to be over 16 percent higher; (2) access revenue enhancements, through using market power, by entities belonging to larger groupings, have resulted in aggregate annual fiscal windfalls of between $5 and $6 billion; (3) these windfalls have accounted for between 4.5 and 5 percent of provider firms' total revenues; (4) on average, each entity evaluated has received approximately between $120 and $150 million in incremental annual revenues via potential overcharge of access rates; and (5) United States telecommunications customers have incurred a between 6 and 7 percent overcharge on monthly bills, over several years, because network access charges have been higher, in part due to horizontal ownership concentration. Access charges are regulated, and horizontal ownership concentration-enhancing deals were allowed only after stringent institutional assessments. The resultant market power exploitation has led to the significant exploitation of United States telecommunications customers. Creation of substantial potential, and across-the-board, inflationary pressures and harm to consumers has been immense. Classic topics, such as access regulation and merger control, remain contemporary, demanding detailed attention, if digital technology is to be ubiquitous in humanity's service. Concomitantly, key contemporary corporate governance concerns, relating to the emergence of horizontal ownership concentration patterns, also become apposite since the associated outcomes have innate major welfare impacts.

Debates on whether structural antitrust remedies or behavioral regulatory remedies should be used to implement institutional mandates are long-standing. Historical data for an entire population of firms for a fourteen-year period have been used, in a natural experiment format, to evaluate the impacts of both (a) structural antitrust policy (stick) and (b) behavioral regulation (carrot), for (i) exactly the same efficiency outcome, (ii) for the same firms, and (iii) at the same time. The results indicate that the stick has been less effective than the carrot. Implementation of regulations has had a significantly larger economic impact relative to implementing structural antitrust remedies on firm efficiency. Fiscally, annual incremental gains generated by the regulatory approach versus the antitrust approach have been over US$2 billion. Behavioral institutional design, implementation, and outcome assessments could be based on dynamic evolutionary process ideas situated within a managed incentive regulation framework. Given recent clamor for actions against technology companies, the facts suggest that behavioral regulations could constrain unacceptable firm behaviors and the results question contemporary antitrust remedies' relative efficacy.

This cliometric study evaluates efficiency outcomes from America's telecommunications sector acquisitions, based on data for 1988–2001, as the sector's horizontal acquisition processes have repeated themselves. Sector ownership has been comprehensively reconcentrated. Concepts from the size and structural capital literatures enable defining mechanisms to establish causality between horizontal ownership influence and efficiency. For the measure of size, smaller-sized firms display positive efficiency impacts, while medium-sized firms display lower performance than average and large-sized entities display substantially lower performance. Entities experiencing a lesser level of structural capital influence enjoy better performance, while entities experiencing a medium level of structural capital influence experience lower performance than average and entities experiencing a high level of structural capital influence experience much lower efficiency. The evidence implies that negative motivations associated with size and power acquisition may be spilt over to acquired entities, and increasing negative size impact suggests these motives have strengthened as larger controlling entities have brought more units under their ambit. Restraining concentration is a fundamental policy concern to restore competitive economy fundamentals and prevent ruining America's entrepreneurial spirit.

In the last few decades, communications markets have undergone several major institutional disruptions. This article examines the relationship between the entry of new competitors and the economic and financial impacts of such entry contingent on the responses made by incumbents. The context is telecommunications local exchange carriers' territories in the United States, which has served as a laboratory for institutional experiments in the sector. In markets with greater competitive entry, there has been a significant response by incumbents in increasing advertising spending and reducing selling and overhead costs. Enhanced annual advertising expenditures by incumbents have been estimated to be $600 million, and annual selling cost and overhead cost reductions as $1.3 and $2.1 billion. Given responses to advertising spending, additional annual revenues generated would be around $1.7 billion. Competitor entry in incumbents' markets have yielded the incumbents annual net economic benefits of $4.5 billion, representing increments to profits of over 22% and up to 45%. To test for the robustness of results, the impact of the different types of mergers that have occurred in the sector have been accounted for in detail. The estimates for the entry variables stay consistent. The idea that disruptive institutional changes cause major resource reconfiguration in firms is supported, and results provide insights on an important issue at the confluence of several literatures.

This article, situated at the interface of competition policy and labor economics literatures, examines the relationship between new competitor entry and its impact on changes in the employment levels and wage levels of incumbent telecommunications firms. The context for examining the issue is the local exchange carriers' territories within the US. In markets with above-average competitive entry by new firms there has been a significant response by incumbent firms in increasing employment levels by 11% relative to industry average values, and wage levels have risen by 11.8% relative to average levels. In modern technologically-dynamic sectors, characterized by network effects, the impact of deregulation, competition policy changes and market entry on changes in employment and wage levels in the incumbent firms have been positive. The idea as to whether across-the-board competition leads to job losses or impacts wages negatively in incumbent firms requires re-assessment and the data suggest that promoting entry can be a powerful policy option to generate useful economic outcomes.

ABSTRACTThe study evaluates the impact of changes in price regulation, an important institutional feature of firms' environments, on average human resource deployment levels among the United States local exchange telecommunications companies using contemporary historical data between 1988 and 2001. The data permit a natural experiment approach for the evaluation. Firms regulated via rate of return approaches have employed significantly less staff. These employment levels have been 15 percent lower than that of firms regulated via incentive regulation. The study is a direct test of a principal dynamic capabilities idea that firms reconfigure resources in the face of environmental changes to retain their competitive advantages. These results signify the importance of designing regulations possessing requisite incentive properties in enhancing firm level employment and support the key premises of the dynamic capabilities perspective.

ABSTRACT**:  This article evaluates the impact of the introduction of incentive regulation on firm growth among the population of local exchange carriers in the US telecommunications industry between 1988 and 2001. The results show that the rate of return method and other intermediate incentive schemes have had a negative impact on firm growth. Conversely, the introduction of pure price caps schemes had a positive and significant impact on firms' growth. These results highlight the importance of proper and appropriate incentive compatible mechanism design in motivating firms to strive for superior performance.