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Dettaglio pubblicazione

2015, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY, POLICY AND MANAGEMENT, Pages 357-377 (volume: 15)

Can access regulation promote broadband investment and consumer welfare? (01a Articolo in rivista)

Avenali Alessandro, Matteucci Giorgio, Reverberi Pierfrancesco

A facility-based firm invests in network quality and sells wholesale local access to two competing downstream firms, which offer vertically differentiated value-added services. We show that, contrary to common wisdom, access price regulation may simultaneously improve consumer welfare and foster investment incentives compared with regulatory forbearance. This result is robust to a number of different model specifications: (i) the bottleneck owner is vertically integrated, and: (a) the regulator can commit before the investment stage, or: (b) there are first-mover advantages, such as consumer switching costs; (ii) the bottleneck owner is vertically separated. We also show that, under access price regulation, consumer welfare and network quality may be higher under vertical separation than under vertical integration.
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