Does Deregulation of Quality Standards in Telecommunications Improve Social Welfare? A Methodological Note

Authors

  • Felipe Morandé Programa de Postgrado en Economía, ILADES-Georgetown University, Santiago, Chile

Keywords:

telecommunications, quality standards, deregulation, social welfare, capital cost, developing countries

Abstract

One of the main reasons behind the big difference observed in the per capita number of telephones between developed and developing countries is the high capital cost —a scarce resource in LDC's— of expanding telecommunications infrastructure. A reasonable question to raise in this context is the extent to which that high capital cost of investment could be diminished if international quality standards for telecommunications (which most developing countries comply) are relaxed. The present paper investigates on this issue and proposes a tentative methodology to assess the technical quality-capital cost trade-off generated. Such a method, combined with the appropriate technical studies on "physical" feasibility of quality relaxation, could shed some light on a way to increase telecommunication services in developing countries.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Cozanet, E., & Gensollen, M. (1987, marzo). Les modèles de prévision de la demande téléphonique en France. Revue Économique.

Curien, N. (1987, marzo). L'accès et l'usage téléphoniques: Modélisation conjointe et tarification optimale. Revue Économique.

Littlechild, S. (1970a). Peak-load pricing of telephone calls. Bell Journal of Economics, 1(2), 191–210. https://doi.org/10.2307/3003180

Littlechild, S. (1970b). A note on telephone rentals. Applied Economics, 2(3). https://doi.org/10.1080/00036847000000017

Littlechild, S. (1975). Two-part tariffs and consumption externalities. Bell Journal of Economics, 6(2), 661–670. https://doi.org/10.2307/3003248

Mitchell, B. (1978). Optimal pricing of local telephone service. American Economic Review, 68(4), 517–537.

Munisinghe, M., & Gellerson, M. (1979). Economic criteria for optimizing power system reliability levels. Bell Journal of Economics, 10(1), 353–365.

Saunders, R., Warford, J., & Wellenius, B. (1983). Telecommunications and economic development. The World Bank and Johns Hopkins University Press.

Downloads

Published

1990-04-30

How to Cite

Morandé, F. (1990). Does Deregulation of Quality Standards in Telecommunications Improve Social Welfare? A Methodological Note. Economic Analysis Review, 5(1), 69–74. Retrieved from https://www.rae-ear.org/index.php/rae/article/view/252

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 1 (1990)

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 1990 Felipe Morandé

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Article usage

ViewsTimes this article's page was opened since the journal started recording statistics. One person can visit more than once.
124
DownloadsTimes the full text of this article (usually the PDF) was opened or downloaded.
138

All time, as recorded by the journal.

Last 2 years: 55 views, 78 downloads.

1.11 downloads per view (journal average 1.65).Downloads of the full text for every abstract view of this article, compared with the whole journal.

Explore the journal's metrics