IMPACT OF COMPETITION, INVESTMENT, AND REGULATION ON PRICES OF MOBILE SERVICES: EVIDENCE FROM FRANCE

Ambre Nicolle, Lukasz Grzybowski and Christine Zulehner

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: In this paper, we assess the impact of competition, investment and regulation on prices of mobile services in France. We estimate hedonic price regressions using data on tariff plans offered by the main mobile telecommunications operator in France between May 2011 and December 2014. In this time period, the obtained quality-adjusted price index decreased by about 42.8% as compared to a decline in weighted average prices without quality-adjustment of 8.7%. In a second step, we relate the quality-adjusted prices to a set of competition, investment and regulation variables and find that the launch of 4G networks by mobile operators was the main driver of price reductions for classic tariffs with commitment. Low-cost tariffs without commitment which were introduced to preempt the entry of low-cost competitor declined at the time of entry. Moreover, we find that regulation, which is approximated by the level of mobile termination charges and international roaming price caps for voice and data, has a joint significant impact on quality-adjusted prices. In percentage terms, competition is responsible for about 23.4% of total price decline and investments in 4G for 56.1%.

Date: 2018-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-com, nep-pay and nep-reg
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-02102353v2
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published in Economic Inquiry, 2018, 56 (2), pp.1322-1345. ⟨10.1111/ecin.12547⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-02102353v2/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: IMPACT OF COMPETITION, INVESTMENT, AND REGULATION ON PRICES OF MOBILE SERVICES: EVIDENCE FROM FRANCE (2018)
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:hal:journl:hal-02102353

DOI: 10.1111/ecin.12547

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().