In the United States, the topic of remedies in network industries cuts across antitrust law and sector-specific regulation, including telecommunications. The legal and economic understandings of a quot;remedyquot; are not synonymous in American usage. In law, a remedy is the corrective measure that a court orders following a finding of liability. With the exception of interlocutory relief, such as preliminary injunctions or temporary restraining orders (which might apply to a proposed merger, for example), legal remedies are retrospective in their orientation. They seek to right some past wrong. They may do so through the payment of money (whether that is characterized as the payment of damages, fines, disgorgement, or something else). Or they may seek to do so through a mandated change in market structure, as in the case of divestiture, or in the imposition of affirmative or negative duties, as in the case of quot;behavioralquot; injunctions. United States v. Microsoft Corp. presented the tradeoff between these various remedial alternatives. Industry-specific regulation, such as regulation of the telecommunications industry by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), is an alternative to reliance on liability rules. Therefore, it is not obvious what a quot;remedyquot; is in a traditional regulated network industry - at least if we are employing the standard American meaning of a legal remedy.In contrast to these legal connotations of a remedy, the economic meaning of a remedy emphasizes market failure. The market failure may result from the unchecked exercise of market power, or from the uncompensated generation of an external cost or benefit, or from an insufficiency of information with which to make efficient choices concerning consumption, production, or investment. Whereas lawyers think of a remedy as what to do after a finding of liability, economists think of a remedy as what to do after a finding of market failure. The two approaches overlap perfectly if legislators and courts make liability rules that are triggered only after a finding of market failure. Of course, if legislators and courts actually did so, the Journal of Law amp; Economics would be a very slim volume that would have ceased publication years ago.

Infrastructures are subject to substantial readjustments of governance structures, often labeled as liberalization, privatization or re-regulation. This affects all traditional infrastructure sectors including communications, energy, transport and water. This study highlights and illustrates some of the major challenges for readjusting the governance of network industries from an economic, institutional, political and technological perspective. the three parts of the book address the institutional design of infrastructures, the role of technology in different sectors and actor behaviour.

Over the last decade, the European Union has undertaken major market-opening reforms in the area of network industries. The liberalization process has now been completed in the air transport and electronic communications sectors and has achieved considerable progress in other network industries, such as postal services, energy (electricity and gas), and rail transport. Creating competition in network industries is not an easy matter, however. Because they benefit from certain advantages such as a large initial market share and control of essential facilities, incumbents typically retain substantial market power in a number of relevant markets and may even use their position to prevent others from engineering such markets. Controlling market power is thus one of a number of key concerns in network industries. It can be achieved in two main ways; either through the adoption and implementation of sector-specific rules or through the application of competition rules. There are advantages and disadvantages to both options, but it is a combination of the two that generally prevents incumbents from abusing their market power in liberalized markets. Competition law and sector-specific regulation provide for the application of remedies on incumbents or other operators holding significant market power. Such remedies are either structural or a behavioural. In some occasions they will apply ex ante, while in others ex post. This book comprises a collection of outstanding essays dealing with the complex legal and economic issues raised by remedies in network industries. While some of these essays analyse remedies from a generic point of view, others focus on specific remedies applied specifically in particular sectors. The sectors covered in this volume include electronic communications, postal services, energy (electricity and gas), and air transport. The final paper also presents a discussion of the United States approach to remedies in network industries. The essays comprised in this book have been written by leading academics (lawyers and economists), as well as private practitioners.

Have you ever wondered how your telephone company or Internet service provider can give you access to almost all people in the world, or how electricity suppliers can compete with each other if there is only one electric supply line passing through your street? This Element deals with the economics and public regulation of such network industries. It puts particular emphasis on the specific economic concepts used for analyzing them and on the regulatory reform movement and the compatibility of regulation and competition. Worldwide most of these industries have changed dramatically in recent years, telecommunications in particular. Network industries mostly exhibit economies of scale in production and similar economies in consumption. Both of these properties cause market power problems that often require industry-specific regulation. However, due to technological and market changes network policies have moved on from end-user regulation to wholesale regulation and in some cases to deregulation.

'To learn about how economic and institutional forces have shaped the network industries and policies towards them, read the first part of the book. To discover their impacts on particular industries, read the second part. And to find out what has happened in particular countries, read the third part. I think anyone interested in network industries should read all of it! The book's structure allows for many interesting comparisons across countries and sectors.' Richard Green, University of Birmingham, UK 'This is a very useful and comprehensive guide to reforms in network industries in communications, energy, transport and water. It is organized by generic topic, sector and region. Its authors are acknowledged experts. I am confident that this Handbook will be a widely read and valuable resource for many years.' Martin Cave, London School of Economics, UK 'Quite an accomplishment, this Handbook provides by far the most comprehensive overview of the role of the private sector and competition in infrastructure industries, with thoughtful surveys of each of the major infrastructure sectors and of the key regions and countries.' José Gómez-Ibáñez, Harvard University, US In recent decades, all infrastructures have undergone significant restructuring. This worldwide phenomenon is often labelled 'liberalization' and although expectations were high with respect to lower prices, greater efficiency and innovation, the expected gains have not always been fully realized. This extensive, state-of-the-art Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the various experiences of liberalization across different sectors, regions and disciplines. The multidisciplinary approach focuses on the economic, political and institutional aspects of liberalization as well as, to a lesser extent, on technological issues. As such, it constitutes a unique contribution, as this broad overview is often lost in the sector specific, country-focused and purely disciplinary approaches prevalent in the current literature. Sectors explored include telecoms, the Internet, energy and transport, whilst the truly global perspective incorporates unique case studies from an array of developed and developing countries including the US, China, India and the EU. The International Handbook of Network Industries will become the definitive volume for academics researchers and students of economics, political science and law interested in infrastructure regulation. It will also prove a valuable guide to practitioners and policy-makers involved in liberalization and competition.

This edited volume of essays examines a wide range of issues related to the regionalisation of competition policy in South East Asia, where the ten member states of ASEAN have launched the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). Written by a diverse group of academics, practitioners and policy-makers, this book explore issues such as the role of competition policy in facilitating the market-integration ambitions of the ASEAN member states, the challenges arising from divergences in the national competition law regimes of the ASEAN member states, and the absence of a supranational legal framework and the future of competition policy in light of the AEC Blueprint 2025. Given the nexus between regional competition policy and regional market integration, this book will be of particular interest to lawyers, economists and policymakers working in the fields of competition law and regional trade law.

Electricity, natural gas, telecommunications, railways, and water supply, are often vertically and horizontally integrated state monopolies. This results in weak services, especially in developing and transition economies, and for poor people. Common problems include low productivity, high costs, bad quality, insufficient revenue, and investment shortfalls. Many countries over the past two decades have restructured, privatized and regulated their infrastructure. This report identifies the challenges involved in this massive policy redirection. It also assesses the outcomes of these changes, as well as their distributional consequences for poor households and other disadvantaged groups. It recommends directions for future reforms and research to improve infrastructure performance, identifying pricing policies that strike a balance between economic efficiency and social equity, suggesting rules governing access to bottleneck infrastructure facilities, and proposing ways to increase poor people's access to these crucial services.