The Consequences of Appointment Methods and Party Control for Telecommunications Pricing

While the economic approach to the politics of regulation emphasizes the importance of organized economic interests in shaping policies, political institutions in which regulatory agencies are embedded may also have significant effects. By including both economic influences and characteristics of political institutions in a model of price setting by state regulators, this paper demonstrates that both shape regulatory behavior in the telecommunications industry. Whether commissioners are elected or appointed, whether they face confirmation by a legislature, and whether a single party controls both executive and legislative branches of state governments influence the level of prices charged for basic services.     

Homogeneity and heterogeneity in information technology private standard settings – the institutional account

The IT (information technology) standardisation landscape is characterised by the increasing importance of private standard setting consortia, a greater convergence between the structural features of formal and private standard organisations, and greater diversity in standard organisations. Institutional theory has been applied to explain the convergence of standard setting bodies. This paper applies institutional theory to four studies of standards organisations, showing that there are indeed homogenising mimetic, coercive and normative forces in standard setting that lead to the convergence of emergent organisations with the institutional features, but that there are also forces promoting heterogeneity, in particular the multiplicity of institutional fields within which standards consortia operate, leading to a complex, and often conflicting, matrix of institutional norms to be accommodated.     

Industrial Diversification and Underpricing of Initial Public Offerings

The initial public offerings (IPOs) of diversified firms, those reporting more than one business segment at the time they go public, experience less underpricing than do IPOs by focused issuers. We explore two explanations for this phenomenon. Diversification may benefit IPO firms by reducing information asymmetries and therefore, lowering underpricing costs. Alternatively, high quality focused firms may be signaling their value by underpricing their shares to a greater degree. Though we find at least some evidence consistent with each explanation, a majority of the evidence favors signaling.