IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cem/jaecon/v4y2001n1p163-186.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Technical Efficiency, Allocative Efficiency, and the Implementation of a Price Cap Plan in Telecommunications in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Noel D. Uri

    (Federal Communications Commission, Washington, DC)

Abstract

Incentive regulation is designed to improve productive efficiency, enhance service quality and consumer welfare, and reduce the costs of regulation. The issue that is considered here is whether incentive regulation in the form of a price cap applicable to interstate access service to local loops in the telecommunications industry in the United States has resulted in an increase in the technical efficiency and allocative efficiency of local exchange carriers. The results suggest that for changes in technical efficiency, there is a definite randomness between 1985 and 1993 with technical efficiency increasing in some years and decreasing in others. Subsequent to 1993, however, there is a consistent improvement in technical efficiency. Given that incentive regulation in the form of price caps was implemented in 1991, it is likely that some portion of the improvement in technical efficiency subsequent to 1993 is attributable to incentive regulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Noel D. Uri, 2001. "Technical Efficiency, Allocative Efficiency, and the Implementation of a Price Cap Plan in Telecommunications in the United States," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 4, pages 163-186, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:cem:jaecon:v:4:y:2001:n:1:p:163-186
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ucema.edu.ar/publicaciones/download/volume4/uri.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ying, John S & Shin, Richard T, 1993. "Costly Gains to Breaking Up: LECs and the Baby Bells," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 75(2), pages 357-361, May.
    2. Majumdar, Sumit K, 1997. "Incentive Regulation and Productive Efficiency in the U.S. Telecommunications Industry," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70(4), pages 547-576, October.
    3. Binswanger, Hans P, 1974. "The Measurement of Technical Change Biases with Many Factors of Production," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(6), pages 964-976, December.
    4. D. W. Jorgenson & Z. Griliches, 1967. "The Explanation of Productivity Change," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 34(3), pages 249-283.
    5. Fare,Rolf & Grosskopf,Shawna & Lovell,C. A. Knox, 2008. "Production Frontiers," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521072069, October.
    6. Kridel, Donald J & Sappington, David E M & Weisman, Dennis L, 1996. "The Effects of Incentive Regulation in the Telecommunications Industry: A Survey," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 269-306, May.
    7. Bernstein, Jeffrey I & Sappington, David E M, 1999. "Setting the X Factor in Price-Cap Regulation Plans," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 5-25, July.
    8. Charnes, A. & Cooper, W. W. & Rhodes, E., 1978. "Measuring the efficiency of decision making units," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 2(6), pages 429-444, November.
    9. Meeusen, Wim & van den Broeck, Julien, 1977. "Efficiency Estimation from Cobb-Douglas Production Functions with Composed Error," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 18(2), pages 435-444, June.
    10. Majumdar, Sumit K., 1995. "X-efficiency in emerging competitive markets: The case of U.S. telecommunications," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 129-144, January.
    11. Brennan, Timothy J, 1989. "Regulating by Capping Prices," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 133-147, June.
    12. Uri, Noel D., 2000. "Price caps and the error in X-factor calculations," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 329-339, December.
    13. Moses Abramovitz, 1956. "Resource and Output Trends in the United States since 1870," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number abra56-1.
    14. Seiford, Lawrence M. & Thrall, Robert M., 1990. "Recent developments in DEA : The mathematical programming approach to frontier analysis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1-2), pages 7-38.
    15. R. D. Banker & A. Charnes & W. W. Cooper, 1984. "Some Models for Estimating Technical and Scale Inefficiencies in Data Envelopment Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(9), pages 1078-1092, September.
    16. Moses Abramovitz, 1956. "Resource and Output Trends in the United States since 1870," NBER Chapters, in: Resource and Output Trends in the United States since 1870, pages 1-23, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Paul W. Bauer, 1988. "Decomposing TFP growth in the presence of cost inefficiency, nonconstant returns to scale, and technological progress," Working Papers (Old Series) 8813, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    18. Leibenstein, Harvey & Maital, Shlomo, 1992. "Empirical Estimation and Partitioning of X-Inefficiency: A Data-Envelopment Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(2), pages 428-433, May.
    19. Aigner, Dennis & Lovell, C. A. Knox & Schmidt, Peter, 1977. "Formulation and estimation of stochastic frontier production function models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 21-37, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christian von Hirschhausen & Astrid Cullmann & Andreas Kappeler, 2006. "Efficiency analysis of German electricity distribution utilities - non-parametric and parametric tests," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(21), pages 2553-2566.
    2. Resende, Marcelo & Otavio Facanha, Luis, 2005. "Price-cap regulation and service-quality in telecommunications: an empirical study," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 1-12, January.
    3. Xueyan Wang & Hong Wu & Lu Lu, 2021. "A Novel Service Provision Mode for Sustainable Development of the Telecom Industry," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-15, May.
    4. Nongluk Buranabunyut & James Peoples, 2012. "An empirical analysis of incentive regulation and the allocation of inputs in the US telecommunications industry," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 41(2), pages 181-200, April.
    5. Kėdaitis Vytautas & Mikučionytė Žymantė & Baležentis Tomas & Valkauskas Romualdas, 2017. "Profit Efficiency in Lithuanian Credit Unions – A Dea Approach," Ekonomika (Economics), Sciendo, vol. 96(3), pages 90-101, January.
    6. Anang, Benjamin Tetteh & Shafiwu, Adinan Bahahudeen, 2022. "Profit Efficiency of Smallholder Maize Farmers in Sagnarigu Municipal of Northern Ghana," Review of Agricultural and Applied Economics (RAAE), Faculty of Economics and Management, Slovak Agricultural University in Nitra, vol. 25(2), December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Noel Uri, 2003. "The Effect of Incentive Regulation in Telecommunications in the United States," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 169-191, May.
    2. Uri, Noel D., 2001. "The effect of incentive regulation on productive efficiency in telecommunications," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 23(8), pages 825-846, November.
    3. Uri, Noel D., 2001. "Technical efficiency, allocative efficiency, and the impact of incentive regulation in telecommunications in the United States," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 59-73, March.
    4. Uri, Noel D., 2003. "The adoption of incentive regulation and its effect on technical efficiency in telecommunications in the United States," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(1), pages 21-34, October.
    5. Uri, Noel D., 2001. "Changing productive efficiency in telecommunications in the United States," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 121-137, July.
    6. Noel Uri, 2001. "Telecommunications in the United States and Changing Productive Efficiency," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 1(3), pages 321-335, September.
    7. Noel Uri & Florence Setzer, 2003. "Assessing the Performance of the Price Cap Plan for Local Exchange Carriers in the United States," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 263-276, May.
    8. Massimo Del Gatto & Adriana Di Liberto & Carmelo Petraglia, 2011. "Measuring Productivity," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(5), pages 952-1008, December.
    9. Voigt, Peter, 2004. "Russlands Weg vom Plan zum Markt: Sektorale Trends und regionale Spezifika. Eine Analyse der Produktivitäts- und Effizienzentwicklungen in der Transformationsphase," Studies on the Agricultural and Food Sector in Transition Economies, Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), volume 28, number 93021.
    10. Mai, Nhat Chi, 2015. "Efficiency of the banking system in Vietnam under financial liberalization," OSF Preprints qsf6d, Center for Open Science.
    11. Lien, Donald & Peng, Yan, 2001. "Competition and production efficiency: Telecommunications in OECD countries," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 51-76, March.
    12. J. Cummins & Hongmin Zi, 1998. "Comparison of Frontier Efficiency Methods: An Application to the U.S. Life Insurance Industry," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 131-152, October.
    13. Chong-En Bai & Qiong Zhang, 2017. "Is the People's Republic of China's current slowdown a cyclical downturn or a long-term trend? A productivity-based analysis," Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 29-46, January.
    14. Luis R. Murillo-Zamorano & Juan Vega-Cervera, "undated". "The Use of Parametric and Non Parametric Frontier Methods to Measure the Productive Efficiency in the Industrial Sector. A Comparative Study," Discussion Papers 00/17, Department of Economics, University of York.
    15. Noel Uri, 2002. "Assessing the Effect of Incentive Regulation on Productive Efficiency in Telecommunications in the United States," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 113-127, March.
    16. Silva, Thiago Christiano & Tabak, Benjamin Miranda & Cajueiro, Daniel Oliveira & Dias, Marina Villas Boas, 2017. "A comparison of DEA and SFA using micro- and macro-level perspectives: Efficiency of Chinese local banks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 469(C), pages 216-223.
    17. Silva, Thiago Christiano & Tabak, Benjamin Miranda & Cajueiro, Daniel Oliveira & Dias, Marina Villas Boas, 2018. "Adequacy of deterministic and parametric frontiers to analyze the efficiency of Indian commercial banks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 506(C), pages 1016-1025.
    18. Michael Hellwig & Dominik Schober & Luis Cabral, 2018. "Incentive Regulation: Evidence From German Electricity Networks," Working Papers 18-03, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    19. Gian Carlo Scarsi, 1999. "Local Electricity Distribution in Italy: Comparative Efficiency Analysis and Methodological Cross-Checking," Working Papers 1999.16, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    20. Tim J. Coelli, 1995. "Recent Developments In Frontier Modelling And Efficiency Measurement," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 39(3), pages 219-245, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    allocative efficiency; incentive regulation; price caps; technical efficiency; telecommunications;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cem:jaecon:v:4:y:2001:n:1:p:163-186. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Valeria Dowding (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cemaaar.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.