Returning to Victorian Competition, Ownership, and Regulation: An Empirical Study of European Telecommunications at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Scott Wallsten

The Journal of Economic History, 2005, vol. 65, issue 3, 693-722

Abstract: This article uses an original dataset to test the effects of government monopoly service, competition, and regulation on the development of the telephone industry in Europe in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Like today, there were stateowned monopolies in some countries, vigorous competition in others, and others with private firms operating under restrictive concessions. The main determinant of government control of the telephone sector was the state's involvement in the telegraph. Countries with competition between telephone providers and whose governments did not threaten to expropriate firms' assets saw higher telephone penetration and lower prices, even in rural areas.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
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:cup:jechis:v:65:y:2005:i:03:p:693-722_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Economic History from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().