This book reviews the economic literature on cooperative investment in next generation broadband networks and geographic regulation. It additionally proposes innovative models for estimating the level of competition and investment in the fixed telephony market and the retail market for newspapers. In doing so, it addresses two hotly debated issues in business strategy and economic policy: the determinants of investment and competition and the impacts of innovative investment schemes. The first chapter reviews the literature on new cooperative investment schemes in next generation broadband networks and geographic regulation. The effects on competition, investment and welfare of such schemes crucially depend on the details of the agreements. For instance, in the case of joint-ventures, the manner in which investment costs are shared and internal and external access prices are determined significantly impacts the outcome. In the case of long-term access agreements, it is essential to consider how access tariffs are structured, whether they can adapt to market developments ex-post, and whether contracts are signed before or after the investment takes place. Generally, many of these agreements allow for some extent of risk sharing, offering the possibility of increasing investment incentives when firms are not risk neutral. It is suggested that regulators consider introducing regulated co-investment agreements complementing current regulation, in addition to considering geographically segmented access prices. The second chapter assesses entry and competition in local retail markets for newspapers. It builds on the new empirical industrial organisation (NEIO) literature to estimate sustainable coverage and competitive effects of entry for Swiss newspaper sellers which sell composite goods (newspapers, food and other goods of daily use). An entry threshold ratio methodology is used, allowing for model estimation even when the range of products under examination is not exactly defined and when price and quantity data are not available. It is found that under duopoly prices the market size of a Commune required for single firm entry is about twice as large as under monopoly prices. A clear and quantifiable trade-off between competition and investment therefore exists. Moreover, it is found that while a second entrant in this market strongly increases competition, further entry doesn’t have a significant additional competitive effect. From a welfare perspective, therefore, it can be stated that “two is enough” to ensure competition in this market. In the third chapter, competition and market strategies in the Swiss fixed telephony market are assessed. A market model based on a generalised version of the traditional “dominant firm – competitive fringe” model, is developed. Direct estimation of the incumbent’s intertemporal residual demand function is performed by instrumenting the market price with incumbent-specific cost shifting variables, as well as other variables. The concrete estimates show that residual retail demand for voice traffic is highly inelastic. Such a level of elasticity is only compatible with a profit maximising incumbent in the case of largely competitive conduct. It is therefore found that the Swiss incumbent acted largely competitively, and that current regulated telephony retail price caps could not be justified on the basis of a lack of competition.

In this book Takanori Ida introduces the current status of the Japanese broadband services and the recent developments in competition policy and in doing so has developed an econometric model to analyse access demand.

Confronted with the major crisis that struck the world economy at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, analysts, researches, and political leaders studied past experiences to avoid repeating errors of diagnosis, recommendation, or action. The disatrous experience of the Great Depression of the 1930's, which caused and social misery, messive unemployment, protectionism forms of nationalism, and led to a world war whose devastating effects were pushed to an extreme, remained in mind.

This book addresses the EU as powerful driver of the wave of privatizations in the network industries and public services since the early 1990s. Based on theoretical arguments and empirical studies it examines the impact of these policies on what is regarded as the normative pillars of the European Social Model.