Luís Otávio Façanha

Price-cap regulation and service-quality in telecommunications: an empirical study ☆

Abstract The paper investigates the service-quality performance of distinct regulatory regimes in US local telephony for the period 1996–1998. It concentrates, in particular, in the assessment of quality performance under price-cap regulation (PCR) taking as reference a variety of quality indicators available from the Federal Communications Commission. The paper identifies quality efficiency frontiers for the firms under the different regulatory regimes by using Data Envelopment Analysis subsidized by a prior application of Principal Components Analysis. The efficiency scores thus obtained serve as basis for a nonparametric statistical test on the frontier uniqueness across regimes. The evidence provides some support to conjectures of inferior quality performance under PCR.

Survival of new firms in the Brazilian franchising segment: an empirical study

This paper investigates the survival patterns of Brazilian franchising firms for the period 1994–1999. First, we considered the (percentage) survival of newly created franchisors in the following years. Survival functions were obtained by means of the Kaplan–Meier estimator for the selected sectors and they indicated sharp declines in the survival rates over time but with differential patterns across sectors. Finally, an econometric analysis based on the Cox proportional hazard model considered the explanatory variables pertaining to size, age and support regarding the legal aspects, location choice and training. The evidence indicates that the supports provided by the franchisor have a positive impact on the probability of survival of new firms, whereas there is partial evidence favoring a positive effect of firm size on survival.

Dinâmica multissetorial da indústria brasileira: um estudo empírico

The article investigated aspects of the manufacturing industrial dynamics in the period 1995-97 in terms of variables related to average plant size, entry and exit rates and turbulence. The results at the 4 digits level indicated a high degree of behavior heterogeneity across the different sectors. The attempt to identify patterns was based in Discriminant Analysis with pre-classifications defined upon Cluster Analysis in 2 digits sectors and users group. The results were not sufficiently strong in the sense of indicating salient sectoral patterns and therefore are consistent with other studies developed for the United States.