Francesc Trillas

Productive Efficiency and Regulatory Reform: The Case of Vehicle Inspection Services

Measuring productive efficiency provides information on the likely effects of regulatory reform. We present a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) of a sample of 38 vehicle inspection units under a concession regime, between the years 2000 and 2004. The differences in efficiency scores show the potential technical efficiency benefit of introducing some form of incentive regulation or of progressing towards liberalization. We also compute scale efficiency scores, showing that only units in territories with very low population density operate at a sub-optimal scale. Our results suggest that the introduction of new units in the most densely populated territories (a likely effect of some form of liberalization) would not be detrimental in terms of scale efficiency. We also find economies of scale or scope at the firm level. Finally, we show that between 2002 and 2004, a period of high regulatory uncertainty in the sample?s region, technical change was almost zero. Regulatory reform should take due account of scale and diversification effects, while at the same time avoiding regulatory uncertainty.

Electricity and Telecoms Reforms in the EU: Insights from the Economics of Federalism

The economics of federalism is a broad discipline with more than five decades of experience. It may shed light on how regulatory jurisdiction is allocated in EU electricity and telecommunications markets. The liberalization of these markets has been accompanied by gradual harmonization of national markets to overcome resistance to competitive forces. Less steps than necessary have been undertaken to promote market integration. Positive and normative reasons remain however for the participation of national or even regional/local powers. Vertical cooperation will remain a necessary condition of a sound regulatory framework, but cooperation may sometimes be inhibited by distributive considerations.

The measurement of regulator independence in practice: Latin America and the Caribbean

We present case studies of the evolution of regulatory independence in practice in the telecommunications industry for 23 Latin American and Caribbean countries. Based on these studies, we construct two realistic indices of regulatory independence, which improve upon the measures of independence that have been used so far in the empirical regulation literature. We show that legal indices may give a partially distorted picture of the commitment ability of institutions. Basic illustrative econometrics suggests that the combination of de facto and de jure independence has a positive and significant impact on network penetration.

Commitment and Regulatory Independence in Practice in Latin American and Caribbean Countries

We present an analysis of the evolution of regulatory independence in practice for 23 Latin American and Caribbean countries in the telecommunications industry. Based on this analysis, we construct indices of regulatory independence, which improve upon the measures that have been used so far in the empirical regulation literature. Our measures are consistent with the fact that legal independence does not solve, but it relocates, the commitment problem of utility regulation. We show that legal indices may give a partially distorted picture of the commitment ability of institutions. In addition, treating independence as exogenous may underestimate its impact. The combination of de facto and de jure independence has a positive (probably modest nonetheless) impact on network penetration in telecommunications markets.

Independent Utility Regulators: Lessons from Monetary Policy

This paper explores the similarity of the underlying economic problems that lead to the establishment of (a) independent central banks to operate national monetary policies and (b) independent regulatory agencies for telecommunications and other utility service industries. We show that, in both cases, the adoption of agencies inde- pendent of government results from the need to achieve credibility and a reputation for economically sound long-run behaviour while preserving signi¯cant discretion to handle unanticipated events. We show that this solution is superior to policy rules that are ¯xed in advance. Both for central banks and regulatory agencies, what is re- quired are institutions that provide limited and accountable discretion within a clear policy framework, for example via high levels of accountability and transparency in their decision making processes. On the basis of a review of the empirical literature, we argue that central banks with superior governance arrangements, particularly on accountability and transparency, out-perform those with inferior arrangements and we discuss how this work might be extended to utility regulatory agencies.

Regulatory federalism and industrial policy in broadband telecommunications

We analyse the impact of regulation, industrial policy and jurisdictional allocation on broadband deployment using a theoretical model and an empirical estimation. Although central powers may be more focused and internalize interjurisdictional externalities, decentralized powers may internalize local horizontal policy spillovers and use a diversity of objectives as a commitment device in the presence of sunk investments. The latter may, for instance, alleviate the collective action problem of the joint use of rights of way and other physical infrastructures. In the empirical exercise, using data for OECD and EU countries for the period 1999-2006, we examine whether centralization promotes new telecommunications markets, in particular the broadband access market. The existing literature, in the main, claims it does, but we find no support for this claim in our data. Our results show that indicators of national industrial policy are a weakly positive determinant of broadband deployment and that different measures of centralization are either irrelevant or have a negative impact on broadband penetration.

The Institutional Architecture of Regulation and Competition: Spain's 2012 Reform

The decision to allocate a given number of governmental interventions in one or more agencies, for example, in the field of regulation and antitrust, raises important issues in organizational and institutional economics. The economics literature suggests that this decision should take into account horizontal and vertical incentive issues and should also take into account the risk of capture and the degree of optimal regulatory independence. More specifically, it should also consider the subtle complementarity and substitutability between competition policy and ex-ante regulation, and its relationship with the vertical chain of government. These issues are illustrated with the decision of the Spanish government to send a legislative proposal to Congress in early 2012 to merge the main network industry regulators with the competition policy authority. The combination of the economic literatures insights with the specific characteristics of regulated sectors in Spain suggests the need for regulatory reform, but does not seem consistent neither with full integration nor with a homogeneous level of (lower than in the status quo) regulatory independence.

Regulatory reform and corporate control in European energy industries

The deregulation process in the EU electricity sector triggered strategic decisions that led to industry restructuring. This paper presents preliminary evidence of the impact of this process on investors, using event studies and estimation techniques such as least squares and GARCH. Our findings suggest three stylized facts: 1) regulatory reform in Europe was certainly accompanied by a takeover wave, as predicted by Mitchell and Mulherin (1996); 2) mergers and acquisitions had a positive impact on the stock price of target firms, and a much lower and sometimes even a negative impact for the bidding firms; 3) the effect of takeover announcements on the returns of competitors of the merging firms depends on the degree of market power. In countries with high market power (like Spain) competitors significantly increase share returns upon takeover announcements, whereas in countries with lower market power (like England and Wales) returns do not change significantly.

Regulatory Environment and Firm Performance in EU Telecommunications Services

We empirically estimate the effects of regulated access prices and firms’ multinational status on firm performance by using firm, corporate group, and country level information for the European broadband market between 2002 and 2010. Three measures of firm performance are used, namely: market share, turnover and productivity. Special attention is paid to differences in the impact on the performance measures depending on a firm’s position as either a market incumbent or entrant. We find that while access prices have a negative effect on entrants’ market share and turnover, the effect on incumbents’ market share, turnover and productivity is positive. Further, we find that multinational entrants perform better than national entrants in terms of their market share but worse in terms of their turnover and productivity. The opposite is true of incumbent multinationals which perform better than nationals in terms of their turnover and productivity but worse in terms of their market share. This confirms that a firm’s multinational status has a significant impact on its performance, and that this impact differs for incumbents and entrants. Finally, when evaluating the impact of access prices on firm performance at the mean performance of national and multinational firms, we find that the impact of access prices is lower for multinational than for national firms.

The Liberalization of Infrastructures in Latin America

This extensive, state-of-the-art Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the various experiences of liberalization across different sectors, regions and disciplines.