A General Framework for Regulation and Liberalization in Network Industries

Christian Jaag and Urs Trinkner

No 16, Working Papers from Swiss Economics

Abstract: In parallel with liberalization, sector-specific regulation in network industries has become a widely discussed topic among academics, policy makers, industry economists and regulators themselves. The issue of these debates has usually been on whether such regulation is necessary and if so what its optimal design should be. Some argue for complete deregulation (i.e., the complete abolishment of sector-specific regulations), whereas others propose reregulations, that is the replacement of pre-existing (monopoly) regulations by new regulations aiming at safeguarding service levels and competition. The resulting compromise is often somewhere in between; the liberalization process usually entails the partial replacement and realignment of sector-specific regulatory intervention by the disciplining forces of competition protected by competition law. Consequently, competition law and sector-specific regulation play complementary roles. In this paper, we present a general economic framework to assess regulatory remedies in network industries. Therein, liberalization, or more generally market access regulation, can be assessed as well. It provides a foundation and explanation of current sector-specific regulations in place.

Keywords: Liberalization; Regulation; Network industries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L43 L44 L51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law, nep-net and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in International Handbook Of Network Industries - The Liberalization of Infrastructure, edited by Matthias Finger and Rolf K?nneke. Cheltenham, UK, Edward Elgar, pp 26-53.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.swiss-economics.ch/RePEc/files/0016JaagTrinkner.pdf

Related works:
Chapter: A General Framework for Regulation and Liberalization in Network Industries (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:chc:wpaper:0016

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Swiss Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Urs Trinkner ().