Lobbying and Regulation in a Political Economy: Evidence from the U.S. Cellular Industry

Abstract

This paper develops a political-economy model of price regulation. Firms' lobbying activity for a given regulatory status might generate a simultaneity problem between the effects and the determinants of regulatory decisions. We explicitly model this two way causality, and empirically test our model in the U.S. mobile telecommunications industry. We find support for our approach: Regulatory choice should be considered endogenous. Accounting for the simultaneity bias, we show that regulation, whenever it actually took place, did not reduce significantly cellular tariffs. However, it would have been more effective if applied in those markets which have not been regulated. To explain this finding, we show that firms' lobbying activity on regulatory choice has been successful, so that firms were able to avoid regulation in those markets where it would have been more effective. From the political economy side, we provide evidence that the probability of price regulation was higher, ceteris paribus, when the regulator was elected by politicians, when the state's governor came from the Republican Party, when the government was politically stable, and when the regulation's opportunity costs were low. Keywords

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