Imperfect Legal Unbundling of Monopolistic Bottlenecks
Felix Höffler and
Sebastian Kranz
No 16/2007, Bonn Econ Discussion Papers from University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE)
Abstract:
We study an industry with a monopolistic bottleneck (e.g. a transmission network) supplying an essential input to several downstream firms. Under legal unbundling the bottleneck must be operated by a legally independent upstream firm, which may be partly or fully owned by an incumbent active in downstream markets. Access prices are regulated but the upstream firm can perform non-tariff discrimination. Under perfect legal unbundling the upstream firm maximizes only own profits; with imperfections it considers to some extend also the profits of its downstream mother. We find that reducing imperfections in legal unbundling (keeping ownership fixed) generally increases total output. Increasing the incumbent's ownership share increases total output if imperfections are sufficiently small, otherwise the effects are ambiguous. Surprisingly, higher ownership shares of the downstream incumbent may sometimes lead to lower degrees of imperfections. Our analysis suggests that consumers may benefit most from legal unbundling with strong regulation and parts of ownership given to a minority outside shareholder.
Keywords: Network industries; regulation; vertical relations; ownership; corruption; sabotage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L11 L42 L43 L51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/27157/1/557262801.PDF (application/pdf)
Related works:
Journal Article: Imperfect legal unbundling of monopolistic bottlenecks (2011) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:bonedp:162007
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Bonn Econ Discussion Papers from University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().