Document de travail

Market Structure, Investment and Technical Efficiencies in Mobile Telecommunications

Jonathan Elliott, Georges Vivien Houngbonon, Marc Ivaldi et Paul Scott

Résumé

We develop a model of competition in prices and infrastructure among mobile network operators. Although consolidation increases market power, it can lead to more efficient data transmission due to economies of scale, which we derive from physical principles. After estimating our model with French consumer and infrastructure data, equilibrium simulations reveal that while prices decrease with the number of firms, so do download speeds. Our framework also allows us to quantify the impact of spectrum allocation. The marginal social value of spectrum exceeds firms’ willingness to pay in our model as well as observed prices in spectrum auctions.

Mots-clés

Market structure; scale efficiency,; antitrust policy; infrastructure; endogenous; quality; queuing, mobile telecommunications;

Codes JEL

  • D22: Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
  • L13: Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
  • L40: General

Remplacé par

Jonathan Elliott, Georges Vivien Houngbonon, Marc Ivaldi et Paul Scott, « Market Structure, Investment and Technical Efficiencies in Mobile Telecommunications », Journal of Political Economy, 2024, à paraître.

Référence

Jonathan Elliott, Georges Vivien Houngbonon, Marc Ivaldi et Paul Scott, « Market Structure, Investment and Technical Efficiencies in Mobile Telecommunications », TSE Working Paper, n° 21-1207, mai 2021, révision 25 avril 2023.

Voir aussi

Publié dans

TSE Working Paper, n° 21-1207, mai 2021, révision 25 avril 2023