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Abstract: We present a duopoly competition model to illustrate how the simultaneous incorporation of two US federal regulatory programs negatively affected telecommunications competition during the past decade. Our model shows that the simultaneous implementation of the Universal Service Fund policy that grants subsidies to incumbent telecommunications providers serving in high-cost areas, and the carrier of last resort policy that mandates incumbents to provide service in under-served geographic areas, deters competitive entry in low-cost markets and thereby runs counter to the objectives for which the policies were intended. This model provides a theoretical explanation of a failure of federal policy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Do universal service programs give customers what they want? This paper uses new survey data to study low-income households’ telecommunications choices in the United States and to consider the degree to which such households’ preferences are addressed by existing universal service programs. The research shows that households that choose only one form of telecommunications increasingly are choosing a mobile phone, while those that choose to have both modes of communications are shifting their usage towards their mobile phones. These trends are less pronounced among higher-income households. One implication for universal service policy is that traditional subsidies for landline phones are increasingly ineffective in reaching low-income households such subsidies are designed to help; subsidies for acquiring and using mobile phone services might be more beneficial to low-income households than traditional subsidies for landline phones. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper analyzes the role that gender plays on the likelihood and extent of peer-to-peer music file-sharing, a key issue in the debate on copyright protection. We use an extensive data set on university students, a core demographic in the use of file-sharing technologies. The empirical results suggest that male and female students respond differently to risk and economic incentives. Specifically, females tend to react more consistently with expected risk and economic deterrent factors, while males exhibit more sporadic behavior. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper investigates international technology diffusion through trade and patenting in a sample of 48 countries for the period 1980 - 2000. We divide the sample in three income groups to detect different patterns of technology absorption. Our results show that rich countries benefit from domestic technology and foreign technology embodied in imported capital goods, middle-income countries enjoy technology spillovers from foreign patents and imported capital goods, and poor countries benefit mainly from foreign patents. We find that government policies on intellectual property rights protection and trade openness have large effects on foreign technology spillovers in middle- and low-income countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: A substantial literature exists on the effects of military expenditures on economic growth, yet no study has analyzed the effects of military occupation other than in anecdotal cases. This paper uses a panel of 214 countries from 1950 to 2013 to study how economic growth is impacted by different forms of military occupation. Transformative occupations aim to establish institutions to promote stability once the occupation ends, while subdual occupations are more malevolent in their objectives. Our results show that transformative occupations produce positive growth in occupied countries after the occupation period concludes. Separating these effects into the short run and long run, we find that while countries subject to a subdual occupation experience a short‐run increase in growth at the end of the occupation, countries with transformative occupation experience long‐run increases in growth. These findings are robust to the inclusion of traditional drivers of growth. Policy implications suggest that regional conflicts that are solved using military intervention may have lasting effects on growth as long as the intentions of the occupying force are transformative in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]