Law and Economics Commons^™

Toward A Unified Theory Of Access To Local Telephone Systems, Daniel F. Spulber, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

One of the most distinctive developments in telecommunications policy over the past few decades has been the increasingly broad array of access requirements regulatory authorities have imposed on local telephone providers. In so doing, policymakers did not fully consider whether the justifications for regulating telecommunications remained valid. They also allowed each access regime to be governed by its own pricing methodology and set access prices in a way that treated each network component as if it existed in isolation. The result was a regulatory regime that was internally inconsistent, vulnerable to regulatory arbitrage, and unable to capture the interactions among …

The Enduring Lessons Of The Breakup Of At&T: A Twenty-Five Year Retrospective, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

On April 18-19, 2008, the University of Pennsylvania Law School hosted a landmark conference on “The Enduring Lessons of the Breakup of AT&T: A Twenty-Five Year Retrospective.” This conference was the first major event for Penn’s newly established Center for Technology, Innovation, and Competition, a research institute committed to promoting basic research into foundational frameworks that will shape the way policymakers think about technology-related issues in the future. The breakup of AT&T represents an ideal starting point for reexamining the major themes of telecommunications policy that have emerged over the past quarter century. The conference featured a keynote address by …

El Fallo Ate Y Sus Circunstancias (Elementos Para Su Estudio), Horacio M. Lynch

Horacio M. LYNCH

Estudio sobre el histórico fallo de la Corte Suprema sobre la libertad sindical (el fallo ATE).

Electronic Tax Fraud - Are There 'Sales Zappers' In Japan?, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

Although there is no public acknowledgement - in the press, in a court case, though any announcement by the Japanese National Tax Administration, or in any academic studies or papers - that Zappers and Phantom-ware are a fraud problem in Japan, a number of factors suggest that Japan may be very fertile ground for technology-assisted cash skimming fraud. Those factors include: (1) a high concentration of small to medium sized businesses; (2) the fact that the retail economy is highly cash-based; and (3) the high level of technology acceptance in the Japanese retail sector - electronic cash registers (ECRs) and …

Torts And Innovation, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein

All Faculty Scholarship

This Essay exposes and analyzes a hitherto overlooked cost of the current design of tort law: its adverse effect on innovation. Tort liability for negligence, defective products, and medical malpractice is determined by reference to custom. We demonstrate that courts’ reliance on custom and conventional technologies as the benchmark of liability chills innovation and distorts its path. Specifically, the recourse to custom taxes innovators and subsidizes replicators of conventional technologies. We explore the causes and consequences of this phenomenon and propose two possible ways to modify tort law in order to make it more welcoming to innovation.

Network Neutrality, Consumers, And Innovation, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, Professor Christopher Yoo directly engages claims that mandating network neutrality is essential to protect consumers and to promote innovation on the Internet. It begins by analyzing the forces that are placing pressure on the basic network architecture to evolve, such as the emergence of Internet video and peer-to-peer architectures and the increasing heterogeneity in business relationships and transmission technologies. It then draws on the insights of demand-side price discrimination (such as Ramsey pricing) and the two-sided markets, as well as the economics of product differentiation and congestion, to show how deviating from network neutrality can benefit consumers, …

Zappers And Phantom-Ware At The Fta: Are They Listening Now?, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

When the Federation of Tax Administrators (FTA) held a national Compliance and Education Workshop in Louisville, Kentucky (February 25-27, 2001) one of the invited speakers was Kevin Pratt, Manager, Underground Economy, Canadian Customs and Revenue Authority (CCRA). He spoke on Zappers.

To the best of anyone's present recollection, this was the first time zappers had been discussed with a large group of state-level US tax compliance professionals. However, most of the information that the CCRA presented to the FTA in 2001 was not its own - it was derivative. Zapper investigations were not an in-house specialty of the CCRA (although …

Zappers & Phantom-Ware: A Global Demand For Tax Fraud Technology, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

There is a demand-market for technology that facilitates tax fraud. By all accounts the providers in this market are working in a growth industry.

In the short term this is bad news for those concerned with tax policy and information privacy. In the long term however, the fight against technology-assisted fraud is stimulating the development of a more robust technology base within tax administrations, and this is good news for those who believe that a sophisticated technological infrastructure is needed to resolve difficult questions of tax design.

This paper focuses on two technology-accelerants of SME tax fraud - zappers and …

Rethinking Broadband Internet Access, Daniel F. Spulber, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

The emergence of broadband Internet technologies, such as cable modem and digital subscriber line (DSL) systems, has reopened debates over how the Internet should be regulated. Advocates of network neutrality and open access to cable modem systems have proposed extending the regulatory regime developed to govern conventional telephone and narrowband Internet service to broadband. A critical analysis of the rationales traditionally invoked to justify the regulation of telecommunications networks--such as natural monopoly, network economic effects, vertical exclusion, and the dangers of ruinous competition--reveals that those rationales depend on empirical and theoretical preconditions that do not apply to broadband. In addition, …

Tercer Congreso Nacional De Organismos Públicos Autónomos, Bruno L. Costantini García

Bruno L. Costantini García

Tercer Congreso Nacional de Organismos Públicos Autónomos

"Autonomía, Reforma Legislativa y Gasto Público"

Mtic (Carousel) Fraud: Twelve Ways Forward; Two Ways 'Preferred' - Has The Technology-Based Administrative Solution Been Rejected?, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

In a May 31, 2006 Communication to the Council, the European Parliament, and the European Economic and Social Committee, the European Commission indicated a need to develop a co-ordinated strategy to improve the fight against fiscal fraud [COM(2006) 254 final]. Although the Communication considers fiscal fraud broadly (VAT, excise duties and direct taxes) the most pressing need seems to be for a VAT strategy that will effectively deal with MTIC (Missing Trader Intra-Community) or carousel fraud. To this end the Commission hosted a conference: Fiscal Fraud - Tackling VAT Fraud: Possible Ways Forward. The March 29, 2007 conference was constructed …

Zappers: Tax Fraud, Technology And Terrorist Funding, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

"Zappers," or automated sales suppression devices, have brought unheard of efficiencies and economies of scale to a very simple tax fraud - skimming cash sales at point of sale (POS) terminals (electronic cash registers). Until recently the largest tax fraud case in Connecticut, also the "largest computer driven tax-evasion case in the nation," was a zapper case. Stew Leonard's Dairy in Norwalk Connecticut skimmed $17 million in receipts and hid the cash in St. Martin (a Caribbean island). Talal Chahine and his wife, Elfat El Aouar, owners of the La Shish restaurant chain in Detroit Michigan have the dubious honor …

Turned On Its Head?: Norms, Freedom, And Acceptable Terms In Internet Contracting, Richard Warner

All Faculty Scholarship

Is the Internet turning contract law on its head? Many commentators contend it is. Precisely this issue arises in current controversies over end user license agreements (EULAs) and Terms of Use agreements (TOUs, the agreements governing our use of web sites). Commentators complain that, in both cases, the formation process unduly restricts buyers’ freedom; and, that sellers and web site owners exploit the process to impose terms that deprive consumers of important intellectual property and privacy rights. The courts ignore the criticisms and routinely enforce EULAs and TOUs. There is truth on both sides of this court/commentator divide. EULAs and …

Innovation And The Domain Of Competition Policy, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

Antitrust policy and the IP laws are both concerned with practices that restrain competition unnecessarily by reducing the size of the public domain beyond that which the Constitution contemplates, or as Congress intended for them to be expanded. In fact, antitrust has a dual role as promoter of competition in IP intensive markets. It regulates both restraints on competition and restraints on innovation. The first line protector of the competitive process in innovation is the IP statutes themselves. The Constitutional Mandate to Congress to create intellectual property regimes in order to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts is …

Spectrum Policy Reform And The Next Frontier Of Property Rights, Philip J. Weiser, Dale N. Hatfield

Publications

The scarcity of wireless spectrum reflects a costly failure of regulation. In practice, large swaths of spectrum are vastly underused or used for low value activities, but the regulatory system prevents innovative users from gaining access to such spectrum through marketplace transactions. In calling for the propertyzing of swaths of spectrum as a replacement for the current command-and-control system, many scholars have wrongfully assumed the simplicity of how such a regime would work in practice. In short, many scholars suggest that spectrum property rights can easily borrow key principles from trespass law, reasoning that since property rights work well for …