Regulation, competition and industry growth: Three essays with data from broadcasting media in Benin.

摘要

Deregulation is justified on the grounds that on the one hand, it stimulates growth and development by fostering competition and removing barriers to entry, and on the other hand, regulation is costly. In this dissertation, I look at the interaction between regulation, competition and industry growth using data from the radio broadcasting industry in Benin.;The industry has been open to private stations since its liberalization in 1997. However, the regulatory authority only allows firms to enter the market at infrequent and unanticipated times. In the first chapter, I estimate a dynamic structural oligopoly model of entry to analyze the impacts of this inefficiency of the regulatory environment on the growth of the industry. The results and simulations show that (i) the regulation, along with high costs of entry, has slowed the growth of the industry; and (ii) the regulation affects locations differently, in the sense that allowing firms to enter anytime would stimulate entry into markets that have no station at all, without encouraging excessive entry in locations that already have one or more stations.;The second chapter explores the competitive pressure faced by private radio stations by using a Poisson model of entry. The results show that markets are heterogeneous in term of the type of stations they attract. Also, competitive effects are important. Accounting for market heterogeneity, the presence of one additional competitor in the market reduces the expected number of new entrants in the market by 40% to 80%. The results also indicate that the first call for applications attracted relatively less entrants than subsequent calls, and that is most likely due to the uncertainty faced by the first entrants in the unexplored market.;The third chapter discusses the sustainability of the broadcasting media and the quality of the regulatory and the economic environments. The growth of the broadcasting media in developing countries is particularly challenging because these countries are characterized by low purchasing power, linguistic pluralism, unfavorable geography and inefficient regulatory environments. I suggest policies that would correct or mitigate these handicaps and create a more competitive and sustainable environment for broadcasting media in developing countries.