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The deregulation process in the EU electricity sector triggered strategic decisions that led to industry restructuring. This paper presents preliminary evidence of the impact of this process on investors, using event studies and estimation techniques such as least squares and GARCH. Our findings suggest three stylized facts: 1) regulatory reform in Europe was certainly accompanied by a takeover wave, as predicted by Mitchell and Mulherin (1996); 2) mergers and acquisitions had a positive impact on the stock price of target firms, and a much lower and sometimes even a negative impact for the bidding firms; 3) the effect of takeover announcements on the returns of competitors of the merging firms depends on the degree of market power. In countries with high market power (like Spain) competitors significantly increase share returns upon takeover announcements, whereas in countries with lower market power (like England and Wales) returns do not change significantly.

Este artículo analiza el efecto de los anuncios de cambios en el control corporativo (Ofertas Públicas de Adquisición - OPA) sobre el precio de cotización en Bolsa de Endesa, Hidrocantábrico y Scottish Power y el impacto que estos acontecimientos tienen sobre los rendimientos de los competidores más cercanos a la empresa OPAda. Por medio de la metodología de “estudio de acontecimiento”, empleando modelos GARCH y MCO, se encuentra que las OPA lanzadas sobre estas empresas hacen que ellas presenten rendimientos anormales positivos, estadísticamente significativos a un nivel del 1%. Los resultados también sugieren que en industrias con alto poder de mercado, el anuncio del lanzamiento de una OPA tiene un impacto positivo estadísticamente significativo sobre los rendimientos de los competidores más cercanos a la empresa OPAda., This paper analyzes how announcel changes in the corporate control (takeover) of Endesa, Hidrocantábrico and Scottish Power affect their stock market returns and the impact that these events have on the stock market returns of competitors of the target firm. Using an “event study” methodology we find that takeovers positively and significantly affect at the 1% level, the stock market return of the target firm. Results are robust across several econometric specifications as GARCH and MCO models. Also, the results suggest the announcement of the launching of a takeover positively and significantly affects the stock market return of the target firm´s competitors in industries with high market power.

El proceso de desregulación del sector eléctrico en la Unión Europea generó acciones estratégicas de parte de las empresas del sector que han llevado al reordenamiento de su mercado de energía eléctrica. Una serie de fusiones y adquisiciones ocurrieron a raíz de ese proceso. Este trabajo investiga cómo la consecuente ola de fusiones y adquisiciones que se dio en la primera década de este siglo ha afectado el valor en bolsa de las empresas compradoras y adquiridas. Para este propósito, haciendo uso de la metodología de los estudios de acontecimiento y con técnicas econométricas de MCO, GARCH y SURE se encontró que las fusiones y adquisiciones presentaron un efecto positivo estadísticamente significativo sobre el precio de cotización en bolsa para la empresa objeto de compra (u opada), lo cual es consistente con estudios previos., The deregulation process of the European power sector generated strategic moves by the power companies leading to a complete reordering of the European electric market that brought out an upsurge of mergers and acquisitions. This paper researches how the following wave of mergers and acquisitions that took place in the 2000 impacted the market value for the acquiring and selling companies that took part of it. With this objective and making use of the event study methodology, and OLS, GARCH, and SURE econometric techniques, we found that mergers and acquisitions had a positive and significant effect on the average market price in public stock exchanges for the companies that were target which is consistent with previous studies.

El proceso de desregulación del sector eléctrico en la Unión Europea generó acciones estratégicas de parte de las empresas del sector que han llevado al reordenamiento de su mercado de energía eléctrica. Una serie de fusiones y adquisiciones ocurrieron a raíz de ese proceso. Este trabajo investiga cómo la consecuente ola de fusiones y adquisiciones que se dio en la primera década de este siglo ha afectado el valor en bolsa de las empresas compradoras y adquiridas. Para este propósito, haciendo uso de la metodología de los estudios de acontecimiento y con técnicas econométricas de mco, garch y sure se encontró que las fusiones y adquisiciones presentaron un efecto positivo estadísticamente significativo sobre el precio de cotización en bolsa para la empresa objeto de compra (u opada), lo cual es consistente con estudios previos., The deregulation process of the European power sector generated strategic moves by the power companies leading to a complete reordering of the European electric market that brought out an upsurge of mergers and acquisitions. This paper researches how the following wave of mergers and acquisitions that took place in the 2000 impacted the market value for the acquiring and selling companies that took part of it. With this objective and making use of the event study methodology, and ols, garch, and sure econometric techniques, we found that mergers and acquisitions had a positive and significant effect on the average market price in public stock exchanges for the companies that were target which is consistent with previous studies.

El proceso de desregulación del sector eléctrico en la Unión Europea generó acciones estratégicas de parte de las empresas del sector que han llevado al reordenamiento de su mercado de energía eléctrica. Una serie de fusiones y adquisiciones ocurrieron a raíz de ese proceso. Este trabajo investiga cómo la consecuente ola de fusiones y adquisiciones que se dio en la primera década de este siglo ha afectado el valor en bolsa de las empresas compradoras y adquiridas. Para este propósito, haciendo uso de la metodología de los estudios de acontecimiento y con técnicas econométricas de MCO, GARCH y SURE se encontró que las fusiones y adquisiciones presentaron un efecto positivo estadísticamente significativo sobre el precio de cotización en bolsa para la empresa objeto de compra (u opada), lo cual es consistente con estudios previos.

The liberalization of telecommunications and technological change have unbundled a vector of public interventions in this industry. Now different government levels interact. The economics of federalism shed light into this new landscape. The insights from this branch of research are used to analyze the European Union common telecommunications policy (as compared to the history of federal and state regulations in the US) and the role of local and regional powers in the promotion of broadband new generation networks. Decentralized non-specialized policies internalize policy externalities, whereas specialized centralized authority internalizes territorial spillovers. Preliminary empirical evidence shows that decentralization of policies inside member states is not detrimental for broadband investment in the European Union., La liberalización de las telecomunicaciones y los cambios tecnológicos han dado lugar a un nuevo vector desagregado de intervenciones públicas en este sector. Dado que en la regulación ahora participan distintos niveles de gobierno, el análisis económico del federalismo puede aportar ideas a este nuevo escenario. Las herramientas de este área de investigación son utilizadas en este trabajo para analizar la política común de telecomunicaciones de la Unión Europea (en comparación con la historia de las regulaciones federal y estatal en los Estados Unidos), así como también el papel de los poderes locales y regionales en la promoción de las redes de nueva generación. Las políticas no especializadas y descentralizadas intenalizan las externalidades que se producen en la interacción de políticas públicas, mientras que las autoridades especializadas y centralizadas internalizan los efectos desbordamiento entre territorios. Alguna evidencia empírica preliminar señala que la descentralización de las políticas dentro de los Estados miembros no perjudica a las inversiones en banda ancha en la UE.

We analyse the impact of regulation, industrial policy and jurisdictional allocation on broadband deployment using a theoretical model and an empirical estimation. Although central powers may be more focused and internalize interjurisdictional externalities, decentralized powers may internalize local horizontal policy spillovers and use a diversity of objectives as a commitment device in the presence of sunk investments. The latter may, for instance, alleviate the collective action problem of the joint use of rights of way and other physical infrastructures. In the empirical exercise, using data for OECD and EU countries for the period 1999-2006, we examine whether centralization promotes new telecommunications markets, in particular the broadband access market. The existing literature, in the main, claims it does, but we find no support for this claim in our data. Our results show that indicators of national industrial policy are a weakly positive determinant of broadband deployment and that different measures of centralization are either irrelevant or have a negative impact on broadband penetration.

Consultable des del TDX, Títol obtingut de la portada digitalitzada, En esta tesis, se utilizan distintos métodos alternativos usados previamente en la literatura para medir el grado de independencia de la regulación para los reguladores de telecomunicaciones. Esos métodos alternativos son utilizados para una nueva base de datos homogénea de 15 años y para 23 países de América Latina y el Caribe. Se muestra una métrica para cuantificar el nivel de independencia en la cual cada país crea legalmente a la agencia de regulación. Todos los métodos utilizados ofrecen los mismos resultados. Después, se construye un índice de la independencia de la regulación más realista, donde se mejoran las medidas de la independencia usadas en la literatura empírica de la regulación. Se pone atención en el nivel de compromiso de cada gobierno en preservar la independencia del regulador. Se combina esa información con los datos de independencia legal para construir índices de la independencia de la regulación más realistas que los usados en la literatura disponible. Se muestra que los índices legales podrían dar una imagen distorsionada de la habilidad para comprometerse de las instituciones y su impacto en la penetración de la red. Los resultados econométricos confirman que la independencia del regulador tiene un impacto positivo en el desempeño de las telecomunicaciones, pero los índices puramente legales parecen subestimar ese impacto., In this research, I apply several alternative methods previously used in the literature to measure the degree of regulatory independence for telecommunications regulators. These alternative methods are applied to a new homogeneous data set for 23 Latin American and Caribbean countries over a 15 year period. I provide a metric to quantify the degree to which each country creates legally independent regulatory agencies in telecommunications. All the methods used provide similar results. Later, I construct a realistic index of regulatory independence, which improves upon the measures of independence that have been used so far in the empirical regulation literature. I focus on the degree to which governments are able to commit to preserve regulator independence. I combine this information with data on legal independence to construct indices of regulator independence that are more realistic than those used by the existing literature. I show that legal indices may give a partially distorted picture of the commitment ability of institutions and of the impact of independence on network penetration. Econometric results confirm that regulator independence has a positive impact on telecommunications performance, but purely legal indices appear to under-estimate this impact.

This article starts by surveying the literature on economic federalism and relating it to network industries. Some new developments (which focus on the role of inter-jurisdictional externalities and multiple objectives) are then added and used to analyze regulatory arrangements in telecommunications and energy in the EU and the US. Although central or federal policy making is more focused and specialized and makes it difficult for more interest groups to organize, it is not clear that under all conditions central powers will not be associated with underinvestment. When technology makes the introduction of competition in some segments possible, the possibilities for organizing the institutional architecture of regulation expand., Este artículo comienza por resumir la investigación sobre federalismo económico y relacionarla con las industrias de red. Algunos nuevos desarrollos (centrados en el rol de las externalidades inter-jurisdiccionales y la multiplicidad de objetivos) son a continuación añadidos y utilizados para analizar la regulación de la energía y las telecomunicaciones en Estados Unidos y la Unión Europea. Aunque la regulación central o federal es más focalizada y especializada y dificulta más la organización de los grupos de interés, no está claro de forma incondicional que los poderes centrales no vayan asociados a niveles demasiado bajos de inversión. Cuando la tecnología posibilita la introducción de competencia en algunos segmentos, las posibilidades de organizar la arquitectura institucional de la regulación se expanden.

In the last days of the electoral campaign for the 2004 general election in Spain, on Thursday March 11th 2004, a series of simultaneous terror attacks caused the death of 191 persons in commuting trains in the capital Madrid. Four days later, the opposition party won the election, against all predictions that were made prior to the terror attacks. This change in expectations presents a unique opportunity to take advantage of event study techniques to test some politico-economic hypotheses. The quantitative exercise is carried out employing Seemingly Unrelated Regressions (SUR). Hypothesis testing is improved by means of bootstrapping techniques. Convergence theories prove quite resilient as, jointly, quoted firms were not significantly affected by the election outcome. The results on the impact on particular companies and industries, however, suggest that a combination of capture and agency problems may play a role in explaining the effects of the change in expectations.

This paper presents new data, in the form of four indices, on liberalization policies and the independence of regulators for a cross section of countries. These indices are combined with a comprehensive set of performance, institutional and political data to analyze both the determinants and the impact of telecommunications policies. We find that liberalization policies are negatively associated with the degree to which countries have an interventionist tradition, but not with the partisan ideology of reforming countries per se. We also find that countries where the institutional endowment constrains less the behaviour of the executive bodies, and countries with a stronger incumbent, are more prone to create truly independent regulatory agencies. There is weak evidence that the creation of independent regulatory agencies has a positive effect on network penetration when we take into account the endogeneity of regulatory independence., Este artículo presenta nuevos datos, resumidos en cuatro índices, sobre las políticas de liberalización e independencia de los reguladores para una sección cruzada de países. Estos índices se combinan con un conjunto amplio de datos de resultados, instituciones y variables políticas para analizar tanto los determinantes como el impacto de las políticas de telecomunicaciones. Hallamos que las políticas de liberalización se asocian negativamente con el grado en que los países se caracterizan por una tradición intervencionista, pero no con la ideología partidista de los gobiernos que deciden las reformas. También hallamos que países en los que la dotación institucional limita menos el comportamiento del ejecutivo, y países con una empresa establecida más fuerte, son más proclives a crear agencias reguladoras auténticamente independientes. Existe evidencia débil de que la creación de agencias independientes tiene un efecto positivo sobre el despliegue de redes cuando se tiene en cuenta la endogeneidad de la independencia regulatoria.

The Catalan government has announced plans to hold a referendum on independence from Spain on 1 October. However, the Spanish government has argued that such a referendum would be unconstitutional and it is still unclear whether the vote will take place. We asked four academics to give their views on whether the vote should be held, and what it would potentially mean for Catalonia and Spain. Mireia Borrell Porta: Rajoy has left the Catalan government with no other option than to call a unilateral independence referendum Jose Javier Olivas: Does the Catalan independence movement really ‘love democracy’? Francesc Trillas: A yes/no self-determination referendum could be the cause of great division among Catalan citizens Toni Rodon Casarramona: It’s time to give Catalonia the chance to decide on its future

Many politicians choose to pursue a role in business following the end of their political careers. Pau Castells and Francesc Trillas assess whether the presence of former politicians in large businesses should be a cause for concern. They write that while in theory politicians might give companies unfair lobbying advantages, in reality this does not always lead to increased success. Using evidence from Spain, they show that Spanish companies have actually been worse off on average in the immediate aftermath of employing former politicians. Nevertheless, the presence of politicians may still give businesses unfair advantages in certain situations, such as in the case of government bailouts.

What should the aim of Europe’s social democrats be? Francesc Trillas writes that the Eurozone crisis presents something of a paradox in the sense that social democratic parties in several European countries have struggled electorally, despite the crisis being closely associated with failures in the banking industry. He argues that the aim of social democrats should be reframed around promoting ‘sustainable progress’, with a wider strategy to tackle unemployment in a globalised context.