This volume is a compilation of papers reflecting many of the issues related to telecommunications that are being debated today and are likely to continue to be addressed in the next few years. The papers examine the ways in which economic and technological forces are changing the regulation of telecommunications and the characteristics of the industry itself. After an introduction on issues such as the information highway, industry consolidation, market integration, and constraints on new policies, the papers cover such topics as the changes in Canadian telecommunications and their economics, the role of telecommunications in productivity and competition, the business network concept as an alternative governance structure, competition policy, convergence of technologies, separation of infrastructure from services, European telecommunications policy, and the historical context in which Canada has handled earlier transformations of a technological nature.

Contributing to a convergence of legal and economic approaches, The Economics of Antitrust and Regulation in Telecommunications integrates economic theory into current EU antitrust policy within the sector. The book addresses the role of competition and regulatory policies on a number of key issues in telecommunications, such as market definition, collective dominance, access to networks, and allocation of scarce resources.

For over a decade, William Lehr, Lorenzo Pupillo, and their colleagues in academia, industry, and policy have been on the electronic frontier, exploring the implications of the technologies that are revolutionizing communication and culture. In 2002, Cyber Policy and Economics in an Internet Age featured essays that focused on such emerging economic and policy-related issues of universal access, appropriate content, spectrum allocation, taxation, consumer protection, and regulation, with respect to the Internet. In this fully revised and updated edition, entitled Internet Policy and Economics: Challenges and Perspectives, the editors and contributors tackle the most current topics and issues, as the Internet continues to permeate all facets of society. New chapters cover dynamics in the developing world, the implications of e-commerce for fiscal policy, and the impact of peer-to-peer networks on music and the arts, as well as debates over intellectual property rights, privacy issues, and cybercrime. Applying insights from economics, political science, law, business, and communications, the book will serve as essential resource for researchers and students, policymakers and regulators, and industry analysts and practitioners.

Laurence Mussio examines how federal and provincial public policy tried to keep pace with the diffusion of telecommunications, consumer demand, and a rising tide of technological innovation. Telecommunications regulation struggled to maintain a balance between producer and consumer in an increasingly complex field and policy makers were compelled to defend the national interest in international telecommunications arrangements or by making far-reaching decisions about transcontinental microwave systems and satellites. By the late 1960s national policy makers had embraced the arrival of the computer - especially once it began to be wired into Canada's communications infrastructure. Telecom Nation explores the impact of the computer on government policy and the first attempts to build a "national computer utility" - the beginnings of the Internet - twenty-five years before it became a reality. Based primarily on the rich and largely untapped sources at the National Archives of Canada, Cabinet records, provincial archives, and private sector repositories, Telecom Nation provides an essential background to contemporary public policy issues by examining how governments reconciled technological change, private enterprise, consumer demand, and the public good in communications. It will be required reading for students and specialists interested in telecommunications, public policy, and technological change.

The University of Michigan Press is pleased to announce the first volume in an annual series, The World Trade Forum. The Forum's members include scholars, lawyers, and government and business practitioners working in the area of international trade, law, and policy. They meet annually and discuss integration issues in international economic relations, focusing on a new theme each year. The central topic of the first World Trade Forum is state trading. To what extent has trade liberalization, as we have experienced it over the last fifty years, affected property ownership? Contributors to the 1998 World Trade Forum explore this question, examining both state practice and the regulatory framework. Their discussions are divided into three parts: Part 1 looks at the World Trade Organization's legal framework for state trading enterprises, taking on such issues as monopolies and state enterprises, the WTO Antidumping Agreement and the economies in transition, and relationship of state trading and the Government Purchasing Act. Part 2 deals with regional experiences in state trading (for the EC, United States, Canada, Japan, China, and Russia). Part 3 examines conceptual issues such as auctions as a trade policy instrument and rule-making alternatives for entities with exclusive rights. The conclusion synthesizes the foregoing chapters in discussing the reach of modern international trade law. Contributors are Frederick Abbott, Ichiro Araki, Christian Bach, Jacques H. J. Bourgeois, Thomas Cottier, William J. Davey, Vladimir Dbrentsov, Toni Haniotis, Bernard M. Hoekman, Gary Horlick, Henrik Horn, Robert Howse, Patrick Low, Will Martin, Mitsuo Matsushita, Petros Mavroidis, Aaditya Mattoo, Patrick Messerlin, Constantine Michalopoulos, Kristin Heim Mowry, Stilpon Nestor, Damien Neven, N. David Palmeter, Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann, André Sapir, Diane P. Wood, and Werner Zdouc. Petros Mavroidis is Professor of Law, University of Neuchatel. Thomas Cottier is Professor of Law, Institute of European and International Economic Law, University of Bern Law School.

This book contains the results of a symposium organized to ask what kind of future old and new players in the telecommunications industries will have given the dynamic changes in technologies and markets. The symposium combined perspectives from industrial practice and academic research originating from North America and Europe. Key issues featuring here are the technological drivers of change, changing market structures and business models, and the nature of future regulation on telecom markets.

Written by an economist and a former member of the FCC, this work is extremely valuable today because of its detailed coverage of the organization and development of many key precepts still considered basic to the economic regulation of the electronic media. The authors write extensively about the interrelationship of economic and regulatory aspects of public policy and provide an historical overview as well as a close look at regulatory machinery and its functions in the 1930s. Their book is well documented and includes appendices with several key legislative acts and treaties.