Anastassios Gentzoglanis

Financial integration, regulation and competitiveness in Middle East and North Africa countries

Purpose - The purpose of this article is to examine is to the link between stock markets and economic growth in advanced and emerging economies in the Middle East and North Africa (mena) region. Design/methodology/approach - Indices measuring the degree of financial openness and market development are constructed and used to perform various Granger causality tests to identify predictors of current growth rates. Findings - It is found that the link exists only in the group of high income countries but this relationship is rather weak for the low income MENA economies. Privatization alone, although necessary, is not enough to spur economic growth. The establishment of sound institutions and well-defined regulatory policies are needed to protect investors’ rights and entice them to invest in real and financial assets in the MENA region. Originality/value - The paper offers insights into financial integration, regulation and competitiveness in MENA countries.

Regulation and the Evolution of the Global Telecommunications Industry

Contents: Preface Stephen Schmidt Prologue Erik Bohlin Introduction and Synopsis of the Book: Evolving Technologies, Competition and the New Role of Regulation Anastassios Gentzoglanis and Anders Henten PART I: REGULATION VERSUS INVESTMENT: THE BALANCE BETWEEN STATIC AND DYNAMIC EFFICIENCIES AND THE MAIN ISSUES OF REGULATORY POLICY 1. Investment in Broadband Technologies and the Role of Regulation Anastassios Gentzoglanis and Elias Aravantinos 2. Intermodal Telecommunications Competition: Implications for Regulation of Wholesale Services William E. Taylor 3. Access Regulation versus Infrastructure Investment: Important Lessons from Australia Martyn Taylor 4. Behavioral Economics and Telecommunications Policy Patrick Xavier and Dimitri Ypsilanti PART II: TECHNOLOGY CONVERGENCE AND THE FUTURE ROLE OF COMPETITION AND REGULATION 5. The Measure and Regulation of Competition in Telecommunications Markets Marcel Boyer 6. Preventing Harm in Telecommunications Regulation: A New Matrix of Principles and Rules Within the ex ante versus ex post Debate Kenneth Jull and Stephen Schmidt 7. The Transformation of Telecoms industry Structure: An Event Study Olaf Rieck PART III: ACCESS REGULATION AND PERFORMANCE IN THE DEPLOYMENT OF NGN: INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCES 8. From the Pursuit of Efficiency to the Pursuit of Competition in New Zealands Evolving Telecommunications Market Bronwyn Howell 9. International Regulatory Comparisons: The Evolution of IP-based Fiber Scott Marcus and Dieter Elixmann PART IV: STRUCTURAL SEPARATION AND REGULATION OF THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY 10. Diffusion of Broadband Internet and Structural Separation Arata Kamino and Hidenori Fuke 11. Implementing Functional Separation in Fixed Telecommunications Markets: The UK Experience Peter Curwen and Jason Whalley 12. Efficiency and Sustainability of Network Neutrality Proposals Toshiya Jitsuzumi PART V: INTERDEPENDENT INNOVATIONS AND REGULATORY POLICIES - MOBILE NETWORK DEPLOYMENT AND MOBILE INTERNET DEVELOPMENTS 13. Interdependent Innovation in Telecommunications: Risk, Standardization and Regulation Bruno Basalisco, Andy Reid and Paul Richards 14. Next Generation Mobile Networks Deployment and Regulation in the European Union Claudio Feijoo, Sergio Ramos and Jose-Luis Gomez-Barroso 15. Mobile Internet Developments in Europe, East Asia and the US Morten Falch, Anders Henten and Karsten Vandrup Index

Regulation, Governance and Capital Structure in Cooperatives

Capital structure efficiency is viewed as contributing to good financial performance. According to the traditional arguments, cooperatives have difficulties in getting an optimal capital structure. This paper argues that governance rules may explain their less efficient performance. By combining the arguments of the political model of governance and the traditional theory of regulation, a unified approach is developed that makes the link between regulatory governance and capital structure explicit. It is argued that the heterogeneity of cooperatives’ members may result in powerful coalitions and in a sub optimal capital structure. The evidence gathered from the empirical literature confirms these results.

Investment in Broadband Technologies and the Role of Regulation

After decades of liberalization of the telecommunications industry around the world and technological convergence that allows for increasing competition, sector-specific regulation of telecommunications has been on the decline. As a result, the telecommunications industry stands in the middle of a debate that calls for either a total deregulation of access to broadband infrastructures or a separation of infrastructure from service delivery. This book proposes new approaches to dealing with the current and future issues of regulation of telecommunication markets on both a regional and a global scale.

Innovation and Regulatory Holdup: The Case of Shale Gas

The shale gas industry is at the crossroads. The current regulatory frameworks have not lived up to expectations as the recent experiences in Europe (France) and North America (Quebec) demonstrate. Although the patterns of regulation and the approaches used in both continents are, in some respects, similar, still some important differences do exist. To better understand the reasons for such a performance, the paper examines best practices in nanotechnology and financial industries. Five lessons emerge from this analysis, and they are applied in the context of shale gas industry. Disruptive technologies create a “knowledge gap” between the industry and regulatory agencies, and this makes the latter less effective. This is reflected in their inability to develop a regulatory framework that is flexible and capable of taking into account the rapid pace of technological changes that occur in this industry. Also, both countries were unsuccessful in making their regulation credible essentially because they have not taken into serious consideration the environmental, health, and equity issues. Nonetheless, France performs better than Quebec in the harmonization of its regulation with the rest of its trading partners, but France still needs to make further advances in this area. Unless regulators develop new regulatory frameworks that take into account the five lessons learned from the analysis of other dynamic industries with disruptive technologies, they will not be able to appease the opposing interest groups, and this may negatively affect the shale gas industry and a country’s growth and development.

Pricing Decisions in Power Pools: The Case of Developing and Emerging Economies

In most developing and emerging economies competition and not regulation is used to determine prices at the wholesale electricity markets. But prices are not as low as it was originally expected. Additionally, there are shortages of supply and a lack of investment in infrastructure. It seems that the competitive process does not provide adequate incentives to resolve these problems. To get a better understanding of the real functioning of these markets, an in-class simulation is developed using fictitious but close-to-reality data. After having explained thoroughly the experience with the restructuring of the electricity industry and the theoretical underpinnings that justify the reforms of the sector, students take the role of generators and are asked to participate in a simulation. They develop winning strategies during the bidding process and they easily grasp the gist of competitive industries by developing intuition in the preparation of bids under uniform auction markets.

Regulation of the electricity industry in Africa: In search of an optimal model – where and when the next model?

Purpose – Regulatory and institutional changes, restructuring and/or privatization of the erstwhile vertically integrated electricity networks have been adopted by all Sub‐Saharan African (SSA) countries in their pursuit of rural and urban electrification, poverty reduction and economic growth. But advances with the reforms remain limited and the results are at best debatable. The purpose of this paper is to examine the reasons for the unsuccessful implementation of deregulation in Sub‐Sahara electricity markets.Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines the experiences with deregulation of the electricity industries in developed and developing economies and surmises on the factors that have contributed to the success of reforms in some industrialized countries and identifies the factors that have contributed to the failure of reforms in SSA. The “evidence‐based economics” (EBE) methodology is used to analyze the existing models of regulation and their differences particularly as they are practiced ...

Evolving Technologies, Competition and the New Role of Regulation: Introduction and Synopsis of the Book

Regulation of the telecommunications industry has traditionally focused on the supply side of the industry, chiefl y the retail segment of the market. Since liberalization of the industry has begun, regulation has gradually shifted to the wholesale segment of the market. The regulatory agencies have intervened to regulate access and facilitate entry and, hopefully, investment in infrastructure. This asymmetric regulation has had mixed results. As an answer to that some regulatory agencies have abandoned wholesale regulation (the case of the USA) and some others have shifted from lighthanded regulation to heavyhanded regulation with mandatory unbundling of the local loop (the case of Australia). Other regulatory agencies have moved to a more gradual type of wholesale deregulation on the grounds that competition in this segment of the market has not yet fully developed, but as it grows the need for regulation is reduced (the case of Europe and Canada). Paradoxically, as competition increases in the retail segment of the market, consumers are increasingly ‘impaired’ in their capacity to make decisions in their best interest. The array of services and suppliers that competition makes available increases consumer choice and with it the diffi culties for them to make rational decisions with respect to services, quality and prices, and so on. If consumers are able to make rational decisions, competition among new service suppliers will increase. But if consumers are unable to make rational decisions because of too much choice or poor quality of information or misinformation, competition is dampened and the competitive process is jeopardized. In that context, regulation must emphasize the demand aspects of the industry and consumer protection should become a priority for the regulatory agencies. Further, next generation mobile networks (NGMNs) depend heavily on the existence of ubiquitous broadband (BB) connectivity, applications and content. Broadband deployment is uneven within and among