Regulation and investment behaviour in the telecommunications sector: policies and patterns in US and Europe

This paper reports the results of the quantitative analysis of international experience of the relationship between infrastructure investment in the deployment of capacity that can carry large volumes of voice and data traffic and regulatory policy changes in the telecommunications sectors. It looks at the relationship between infrastructure investment for these infrastructure assets and the access pricing régimes for local exchange carriers in the United States and Europe. It then looks at the relationship between various aspects of regulatory and institutional policy changes in Europe and how they affect access prices.The paper finds that a lower access price promotes greater deployment of digital technology among US incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs). Based on this finding, it suggests that it is in the ILECs interest to have access to their networks encouraged.The European data for interconnection are recent and far reaching conclusions are not feasible, but the findings, however, suggest that competition has worked by facilitating new entry through decreasing interconnection prices, although path dependencies, of existing and traditional concepts, in the mindsets of operators as well as regulators, may account for these findings.     

Probabilistic Models for Bacterial Taxonomy

We give a survey of different partitioning methods that have been applied to bacterial taxonomy. We introduce a theoretical framework, which makes it possible to treat the various models in a unified way. The key concepts of our approach are prediction and storing of microbiological information in a Bayesian forecasting setting. We show that there is a close connection between classification and probabilistic identification and that, in fact, our approach ties these two concepts together in a coherent way.     

Survey on Competing in Network Industries: Firm Strategies, Market Outcomes, and Policy Implications

We review the recent literature on market structure, firm strategies and public policy in network industries. In particular, we focus on the latest applied work, including case studies and empirical work as well as refinements of the established theoretical results. We group each set of results along two dimensions: Static (within-generation) and dynamic (across-generations).     

Paragons of virtue? Competitor entry and the strategies of incumbents in the U.S. local telecommunications industry

We investigate whether the presence of new competitors has influenced the behaviour of U.S. incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) with respect to pricing, advertising and the extent of diversification that they engage in. This issue is explored empirically, using data for the major local exchange carriers for the years 1994 to 1998. The period straddles periods of both absence and presence of competition in the industry, since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has opened hitherto closed markets to competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs). While a recent Federal Communications Commission (FCC) report on local competition documents vigorous entry during the past years, the market share of the entrants is insubstantial. Our results indicate that the threat provided by market entrants has notably influenced the strategic behaviour of ILECs. The findings show that the incumbent U.S. local operators, particularly the larger ILECs, aggressively protect their profit streams from traditional business. The evidence demonstrates that the ILECs have responded to the Telecommunications Act 1996, and to the threat of market entry it has created, through entry deterrence. This strategic behaviour has been successful in providing ILECs with protection of their monopolistic markets so far.     

How Are Derivatives Used? Evidence from the Mutual Fund Industry

We investigate investment managers' use of derivatives by comparing return distributions for equity mutual funds that use and do not use derivatives. In contrast to public perception, derivative users have risk exposure and return performance that are similar to nonusers. We also analyze changes in fund risk in response to prior fund performance. Changes in risk are substantially less severe for funds using derivatives, consistent with the explanation that managers use derivatives to reduce the impact of performance on risk. We provide new evidence regarding the implications of cash flows and managerial gaming for the relation between performance and risk.     

The role of business subsidies in job creation of start-ups, gazelles and incumbents

This study contributes to the empirical literature concerning the role of business subsidies in job creation. Our empirical analysis, using an extensive firm-level data, suggests that the impact of business subsidies on employment growth differs more between high-growth start-ups and other firms than between start-ups and incumbents. On average, all subsidies relate positively to the contemporary employment growth for both start-ups and incumbents. Furthermore, after subsidy reception, the employment of both start-ups and older incumbents receiving employment or other subsidies grows more than that of non-subsidized firms. However, we find that business subsidies do not provide a significant additional boost to either contemporary or after-subsidy growth for young high-growth companies. There are apparently some other factors that promote growth in young high-growth firms; these factors help foster strong growth in many cases with or without subsidies.     

DOES VOLATILITY DECREASE AFTER REVERSE STOCK SPLITS?

Previous research documents that volatility decreases after reverse stock splits. I show that measurement effects bias observed volatility, especially for lower priced stocks. Based on observed returns, volatility decreases 25% after reverse splits. Controlling for bid–ask bounce, volatility still decreases for stocks with prices above $5.00. However, for stocks below $2.00, volatility increases slightly. The portion of observed volatility attributable to measurement effects declines as the stock price increases and as the minimum tick size decreases. Finally, there is a significant and positive cross‐sectional relation between changes in the number of trades and changes in volatility after reverse splits.