Sibling Rivalry: The Emergence of Competition among the Baby Bells
Document Type
Article
Journal/Book Title/Conference
Managerial and Decision Economics
Volume
16
Publication Date
1995
First Page
479
Last Page
492
Abstract
The Modification of Final Judgment (MFJ) prohibits the seven regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs) spun off by AT&T from competing with one another in various markets ‘adjacent’ to the local telephone exchange. I have examined the competitiveness of three of these adjacent markets (cellular telephone, paging services, and yellow pages publishing) since divestiture in order to assess the likelihood of collusion among the RBOCs. On the basis of a decade of post‐divestiture experience, I find the prospect of collusion to be remote and, hence, the probability of anticompetitive effects from lifting the MFJ to be vanishingly small.
Recommended Citation
Sibling Rivalry: The Emergence of Competition among the Baby Bells” (with Richard S. Higgins), Managerial and Decision Economics 16 (July–August 1995), pp. 479–492; reprinted in Richard S. Higgins and Paul H. Rubin (eds.), Deregulating Telecommunications: The Baby Bells Case for Competition, Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 1995, pp. 203–216.
