Michael A. Einhorn In continuing to deregulate telecommunications companies, regulators have begun to consider alternative approaches to traditional cost-based price regulation as a means of encouraging monopoly efficiency, promulgating technological innova- tion, protecting consumers, and reducing administrative costs. Under cost-based regulatory procedures that had been used, prices were designed to recover the regulated company's costs plus an allowed rate of return on its rate base; this strategy was costly to administer, provided no consistent incentives to cost-ef- ficiency and...

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 envisioned a competitive free-for-all in the U.S. telecommunications industry with removal of barriers to entry in local telecommunications markets and the lifting of the artificial restrictions that kept the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) out of the interLATA long-distance market. After close to 5 years, only one RBOC has been granted permission (controversially) to enter the interLATA market, and local competition has yet to provide most consumers with meaningful choices. In addition, the wave of mergers across the industry has raised the...

Current Directions in Postal Reform brings together leading practitioners, worldwide postal administrations, and the courier industry as well as a number of regulators, academic economists, mailers and lawyers, to examine some of the major policy and regulatory issues facing the postal and delivery industry. Issues addressed include international postal policy; the universal service obligation; regulation; competition, entry, and the role of scale and scope economies; the nature and role of cost analysis in the postal service; productivity; interaction of law and economics; and...

Electricity markets are being deregulated or face new regulatory frameworks. In such changing markets, new pricing strategies will need to consider such factors as cost, value of service and pricing by objective. Pricing in Competitive Electricity Markets introduces a new family of pricing concepts, methodologies, models, tools and databases focused on market-based pricing. This book reviews important theoretical pricing issues as well as practical pricing applications for changing electricity markets.

The aim of this book, Future of the Telecommunications Industry: Forecasting and Demand Analysis, is to describe leading research in the area of empirical telecommunications demand analysis and forecasting in the light of tremendous market and regulatory changes. Its purpose is to educate the reader about how traditional analytic techniques can be used to assess new telecommunications products and how new analytic techniques can better address existing products. The research presented focuses on new products such as Internet access and additional lines and new techniques such as...

In the centennial year of the birth of Sir John Cockcroft, first master of my Cam- bridge College, Churchill, and the first man to split the atomic nucleus by artificial means, it is indeed relevant to consider the outcome of his efforts at developing atomic power. From the earliest days of the construction of Calder Hall-the first nuclear power station in Britain-and the establishment of the British Atomic Re- search Center at Harwell, and the Chalk River Nuclear Station in Canada, through the "Windscale" nuclear accident in Britain, up to the present, when some 20% of UK energy is derived...

My curiosity with the economic efficiency and social benefits of provisions used by telecommunications carriers to limit their liability to customers for damages arising from service interruptions and network outages is a longstanding one. It began with the changing state regulatory environments in the late 1980's while representing AT&T as an attorney before numerous state legislatures in the Midwest. As telecommunications carriers faced the ramifications of deregulation, several legal consequences came to the fore. One important consequence was the impact of changing regulatory rules and...

Regulation Under Increasing Competition brings together practitioners, regulators, and economists to examine the important policy and regulatory issues facing the telecommunications and electricity industries. This volume reviews such topics as competitive entry, stranded costs, pricing and market mechanisms. It provides a unique perspective on problems in a newly deregulated environment.

David Gabel and David F. Weiman The chapters in this volwne address the related problems of regulating and pricing access in network industries. Interconnection between network suppliers raises the important policy questions of how to sustain competition and realize economic efficiency. To foster rivalry in any industry, suppliers must have access to customers. But unlike in other sectors, the very organization of network industries creates major impediments to potential entrants trying to carve out a niche in the market. In traditional sectors such as gas, electric, rail, and telephone...

In the winter of 1996, after 4 years of planning and research, the Symposium on the Virtual Utility was held in Saratoga Springs, New York. It was sponsored by Niag- ara Mohawk Power Corporation, Co-sponsored by CSC Index and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and hosted by Rensselaer Poly- technic Institute, Troy, NY. The symposium sought to identify new areas of inquiry by presenting cutting-edge academic and practitioner research intended to further our understanding of the strategic, technologically-driven issues confronting the elec- tricity production and...