Economic determinants of global mobile telephony growth

This study examines the substitution effect between fixed-line and mobile telephony while controlling for the consumption externality associated with telephone networks. A dynamic demand model is estimated using a global telecommunications panel dataset comprised of 56 countries from 1995–2000. Estimation results show the presence of a substantial substitution effect. Additionally income and own-price elasticities are reported. Analysis of impulse responses for price, income and network size indicate substantial mobile telephone growth is yet to be realised. However, price ceilings imposed in the fixed-line network can retard the growth of the mobile network.     

The complementarity between calls and messages in mobile telephony

This article estimates price elasticities of demand for mobile telephone calls and messages. We use panel data consisting of telephone bills to Portuguese mobile telephony consumers. In order to account for the unobserved individual heterogeneity and data censoring, we estimate a Tobit model for panel data with individual random effects. The demands for calls and messages are inelastic. Calls and messages are found to be complements.     

Diffusion of mobile telephony in India: An empirical study

Diffusion of new technology is an important driver of economic growth. In this paper, diffusion of mobile telephony in India is studied. There is a vast diffusion potential in this country which needs to be exploited efficiently and in a rational way. This paper investigates the social, technological, economical and political (STEP) factors that have influenced the diffusion process of mobile telephony especially the diffusion speed. The epidemic model, which is widely employed in the diffusion studies of mobile telephony, is used for the study. The data is fitted into logistic, gompertz, and bass models by nonlinear least squares and it is found that gompertz model best describes the diffusion process of mobile telephony in India. The study reveals that competition and government intervention played a significant role in accelerating the diffusion speed of mobile telephony by making the technology affordable. It is found that mobile telephony is a substitute for fixed line telephony in India. The findings will be useful in taking managerial decisions with respect to factors in forecasting and controlling the diffusion process of emerging technologies.     

Leapfrogging in mobile telephony: A measure for comparing country performance

There is widespread agreement as to what constitutes leapfrogging in technology and also that mobile phones are a good example of this phenomenon. What is lacking in the literature, however, is any attempt to operationalize the notion of leapfrogging in a way that allows us to rank different countries. The purpose of this paper accordingly is to provide such a measure using both the ratio of mobile to fixed telephones and a weighting of this ratio for a particular country by its share in the total number of mobile phones in the sample. The proposed measure yields a number of insights that cannot be gained by using only the ratio of mobile to fixed telephones. Yet, for a number of the best performing countries this ratio is very much in evidence.     

Service quality in Brazilian mobile telephony: an efficiency frontier analysis

The mobile telephony sector is characterized by the dynamic interplay of rapid changes in technology and an apparently growing competition, as indicated by the fierce nonprice competition, and is yet associated with the entry of new operating companies in some cases. In this context, a relevant and neglected issue is the assessment of how service quality responded to an increasingly competitive environment. This study utilizes data envelopment analysis to assess the quality efficiency of mobile telephony companies in Brazil during the 2000–2003 period. Window analysis was conducted for the entire period, taking as reference different quality indicators pertaining to different forms of complaints and calls completed and interrupted. The efficiency measurement was made feasible by interpreting the indicators reflecting a positive dimension of quality as outputs and those reflecting negative aspects of quality as inputs. Given potential heterogeneities across firms that relate to the frequency band and to the technology (time division multiple access technology and code division multiple access technology among others), this article considered adjusted efficiency scores. The Tobit model for censored data was estimated to control for the aforementioned aspects. Rescaled residuals from the econometric estimation produced efficiency scores for service quality. The evidence indicated an overall improvement in efficiency over time. Nonparametric tests were consistent with a positive evolution of quality over time even for shorter subperiods.     

Fixed-to-mobile call substitution and telephony market definition in Korea

An appropriate market definition is critical in most antitrust cases. In practice, antitrust authorities define economic markets in a deterministic manner with little concern about the risk involved in defining markets incorrectly. In contrast, this article proposes a probabilistic market definition method by which antitrust authorities can establish a statistical confidence level for their intended market-definition judgments. As an application, we examine the likelihood that the fixed-line and mobile telephony services in Korea can compete in the same economic market. Combining critical loss analysis with a hierarchical Bayes model for stated preference data, we find some evidence for the separation of the fixed-line and mobile telephony markets in present-day Korea. After discussing certain possible regulation biases for market definition, we predict that the two markets will converge in the near future as the mobile price premium continues to decrease.     

Upstream regulation in mature network industry: evidence from Nordic mobile telecommunications markets

This article investigates the effects of upstream regulation that aims to create niches and attract new type of entrants on the competitive environment of downstream markets. Using unique cross-country data of Nordic mobile telecommunications markets, we show that upstream regulation leads to (i) increases in both number and aggregate market share of service-based providers in the downstream market, (ii) an increase in the number of service-based providers, thus increasing their aggregate market share, but no opposite direction of results and (iii) a lower retail price level, proxied by average revenue per user. Our findings imply that upstream regulation may be able to achieve better outcomes when the policy objectives are to revitalize mature network industries and to enhance consumer welfare.     

Estimating the employment effects of education for disabled workers in Norway

In this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of educational programmes used as an employment strategy for disabled workers in Norway. To obtain these estimates we follow the employment career of a sample of participants in educational programmes and nonparticipants three years after they had left the vocational rehabilitation benefit system. We specify an employment outcome model that includes both unobserved heterogeneity and selection bias due to correlation between unmeasured factors and a person's training status. Even though participants in educational programmes have employment rates that are around eight percentage points higher than those who did not participate in such programmes, econometric selection models produce a training effect for education not significantly different from zero. First version: Jan 2001/Final version received: April 2002  The data were provided by The Norwegian Social Data Service in Bergen. I would like to thank Dag Kiberg for preparing the raw data. All the data are gathered from sources at The Directorate of Labour, The Social Insurance Organization and Statistics Norway. None of the mentioned institutions are in any circumstances responsible for the analysis or for the conclusions drawn from it.     

Network effects and the choice of mobile phone operator

This paper explores the role of network effects in the consumer’s choice of mobile phone operators in the UK. It contributes to the existing literature by taking a new approach to testing for direct network effects and by using individual-level data, which allows to analyse the impact that the immediate social network has on consumer choice in network markets. For our empirical analysis we use two sources of data: market-level data from the British telecommunications regulator OFCOM and micro-level data on consumers’ usage of mobile telephones from the survey, Home OnLine. We estimate two classes of models which illustrate the role of network effects. The first is an aggregate model of the comparative volume of on-net and off-net calls. This finds that the proportion of off-net calls falls as mobile operators charge a premium for off-net calls, but even in the absence of any price differential between on-net and off-net, there is still a form of pure network effect, where a disproportionate number of calls are on-net. The second is a model of the individual consumer’s choice of operator. This finds that individual choice shows considerable inertia, as expected, but is heavily influenced by the choices of others in the same household. There is some evidence that individual choice of operator is influenced by the total number of subscribers for each operator, but a much stronger effect is the operator choice of other household members.     

Employment effects of the provision of specific professional skills and techniques in Germany

Based on unique administrative data, which has only recently become available, this paper estimates the employment effects of the most important type of public sector sponsored training in Germany, namely the provision of specific professional skills and techniques (SPST). Using the inflows into unemployment for the year 1993, the empirical analysis uses local linear matching based on the estimated propensity score to estimate the average treatment effect on the treated of SPST programs by elapsed duration of unemployment. The empirical results show a negative lock-in effect for the period right after the beginning of the program and significantly positive treatment effects on employment rates of about 10 percentage points and above a year after the beginning of the program. The general pattern of the estimated treatment effects is quite similar for the three time intervals of elapsed unemployment considered. The positive effects tend to persist almost completely until the end of our evaluation period. The positive effects are stronger in West Germany compared to East Germany.     

Employment effects of payroll taxes - an empirical test for Germany

This study tests to what degree the incidence of payroll taxes in Germany is on employment and whether in consequence payroll taxes, in particular social insurance contributions, are the culprit behind the growing unemployment problem. Using industry level data for 18 years (1977–1994) a system of five dynamic factor demand equations is estimated. Various simulations indicate that the employment effects of payroll taxes are minimal.     

Semiparametric binary random effects models: Estimating two types of drinking behavior

I propose a new estimator for cross-section semiparametric regressions containing unobserved binary random effects and apply it to alcohol consumption. The random effects (health consciousness) explain a significant proportion of otherwise unexplained variation in alcohol consumption. Education positively correlates with health consciousness.     

Economic progress and skill obsolescence with network effects

Summary. We construct an OLG model with network effects to examine skill obsolescence when individuals can choose technological vintages. In the absence of transfer payments, some regions of the parameter space have unique stationary equilibria, others have unique cyclical equilibria, and others have multiple stationary equilibria. All equilibria are Pareto efficient. However, rat race equilibria can exist in which all agents currently alive prefer a slower rate of progress than occurs in equilibrium. When contemporaneous transfers are allowed, equilibria are unique everywhere, but a cycle still exists, and a rat race can still arise in equilibrium. Allowing intertemporal transfers (debt) ensures that all equilibria are stationary. In the relevant parameter range, the introduction of debt can eliminate cycles and increase the long-run growth rate. No rat race equilibria exist when debt is allowed.Received: 3 January 2002, Revised: 3 June 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: 041, J24, O33. Correspondence to: Ian P. KingEarly versions of this paper were presented at the West Coast Macro Workshop, the Mid-West Macro Meetings, the Canadian Macroeconomics Study Group Meetings, and the Society for Economic Dynamics Meetings. We would like to thank V. V. Chari, Merwan Engineer, Don Ferguson, John Hillas, John Knowles, Dan Peled, Dan Usher, Linda Welling and Julian Wright for helpful comments. We are especially grateful to an anonymous referee for some very useful and substantive comments.     

Estimating the efficiency of general practitioners controlling for case mix and outlier effects

Data on some 600 general practitioners located in the same region of Austria for the years 2001–2003 are analyzed using Data Envelopment Analysis. The available information comprises patient numbers by age category, case mix, and resource use; outliers are removed with a procedure based on the order-m estimator. The results do not vary much over different samples and specifications and imply an average inefficiency of around 15%. Throughout the observation period, only slight changes in total factor productivity are observed.     

德国的工业生物技术

德国的工业生物技术具有很长的历史,目前在各行业的应用迅速增长.通过发展工业生物技术,德国提高了工业的竞争力和创造了大量就业机会.德国具有发展工业生物技术的雄厚工业基础及技术优势,但缺乏风险资本和配套政策.因此,目前德国正在研究发展工业生物技术的相关政策.     

德国智能电网的发展现状

“电子能源”是基于信息和通信技术的未来能源系统。该系统使得整个能源供应系统实现全面的数字化联网,以及计算机控制和监测。发展能源电网的关键是为各种发布式发电装置提供自由接入的动态平台、为节能和需求方管理提供智能化的控制管理平台、为电动汽车和各种新型电器提供创新的应用平台,从而解决供电安全和可持续发展等问题。     

Privatisation in East Germany

The research on which the present paper is based was financially supported by the University of Paderborn.     

Technology adoption in markets with network effects: Theory and experimental evidence

We examine a technology-adoption game with network effects in which coordination on either technology A or technology B constitutes a Nash equilibrium. Coordination on technology B is assumed to be payoff dominant. We define a technology’s critical mass as the minimal share of users, which is necessary to make the choice of this technology the best response for any remaining user. We show that the technology with the lower critical mass implies risk dominance and selection by the maximin criterion. We present experimental evidence that both payoff dominance and risk dominance explain participants’ choices in the technology-adoption game. The relative riskiness of a technology can be proxied using either technologies’ critical masses or stand-alone values absent any network effects.     

Estimating consumer demand in Korea

In this paper, time series annual data on five consumer goods for Korea are analyzed using the neoclassical model of consumer behavior. The approach taken is the indirect utility function and employs a translog form. Various restrictive specifications of consumer preferences with respect to homotheticity and separability are examined and rejected by the likelihood ratio test. Income and price elasticities are estimated, which appear to be generally high relative to those of developed countries. Growth in real income is primarily responsible for changes in commodity demand. Marginal utilities of income and associated income elasticities are calculated, which are consistent with normal expectations.