Recent changes in telecommunications markets raise the issue of how price restrictions across markets impact strategic entry and pricing decisions. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 opens all telecommunications markets to competition and contains a provision for universal service, requiring that advanced services be made available to rural customers at rates comparable to those for urban customers. We develop a simple multi-market model which features an oligopolistic urban market, entry auctions for rural service, and a price restriction across markets, and analyze strategic pricing and entry choices. We show how these price restrictions induce a firm operating in both markets to become a "softer" competitor, thus placing the firm at a strategic disadvantage relative to urban markets competitors. However, once we account for entry incentives and recognize that firms may bid strategically for rural markets, we find that the downstream strategic disadvantage becomes advantageous, leading to higher prices and profits in both markets. We also identify when these price restrictions put outside firms, even relatively inefficient ones, at a strategic advantage in entry auctions.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Duke University, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
99-04.
Length: Date of creation: 1999 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:duk:dukeec:99-04
Contact details of provider: Postal: Department of Economics Duke University 213 Social Sciences Building Box 90097 Durham, NC 27708-0097 Phone: (919) 660-1800 Fax: (919) 684-8974 Web page: http://www.econ.duke.edu/
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Department of Economics Webmaster).
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)