Regulatory change has come to characterize global telecommunications in the 1990s. In this timely book, contributors of recognized distinction and knowledge provide a range of perspectives and discuss a variety of approaches to telecommunications issues, providing broad coverage of telecommunications regulatory policies. In its analysis of public policies for deregulating telecommunications services, the work emphasizes the business strategy implications entailed by each public policy. The volume argues that globalization and interdependence are forcing governments to adjust their policies; that technology often eclipses voluntary government policies; and that all multinational corporations, through their investment strategies and R&D efforts, are important actors in regulatory policy, as are national and international agencies.

Recent work in the field of telecommunication economics, with particluar emphasis on its international regulatory aspects, is the focus of the present volume, which assembles an annotated bibliography of nearly four hundred authoritative and up-to-date books and articles on more than fifteen related topics.

While considerable attention has been focused on how information technologies (IT) are affecting particular industrialized nations, the broader implications of the Information Revolution have begun to be appreciated only in the past few years. This volume represents an important first step in understanding and coming to terms with the global impact of these technological advances. Based on a series of recent conferences, it distills the collective wisdom of an international group of some forty specialists in communications, trade, finance, development, and diplomacy. The authors identify the potential repercussions arising from the worldwide dissemination of IT and explore the adjustments and collective responses that may help to maximize benefits and reduce harmful effects. The introductory essays make it clear that while information technologies have created unprecedented opportunities for growth, they are drastically altering economic relations and promoting forms of economic interdependence that may have very serious consequences for individual nations and the world economy as a whole. Among the economic issues addressed in this volume are regulatory policy; barriers against information trade; the effects of IT on financial markets and international financial flows; the unequal distribution costs and benefits between developed and developing nations; the supranational power of multinational conglomerates; and economically harmful competition. The authors examine institutional changes that are affecting banking, finance, and trade, as well as legal questions relating to data flow privachy and intellectual property rights. They discuss the need for international cooperation and revised trade agreements to handle these complex new problems. Social and political issues, including education, employment, and democratic participation are also considered. Several chapters are devoted to recent innovations and anticipated developments in technology that will further effect global interdependence. The most authoritative, up-to-date source of information on the subject, this volume is recommended for practitioners and scholars concerned with public policy, international trade relations, finance, communications, information technology, and a variety of related fields.

This work explores the problems arising from dynamic information technology in its application to intellectual property rights. In a global marketplace of ideas, political boundaries and the sovereignty of the nation state seem to be disappearing because of the increasing difficulty of scrutinizing the infringement of intellectual property. That is particularly true of computer software, the focus of this book. The work analyzes the legal and political economy implications of investment in the software programming industry and the near-futility of monitoring protection of intellectual property in industry. The book begins by exploring the current state of copyright laws for computer software. It analyzes the economic theories of demand elasticities, public choice, clubs, and the concept of public goods as those theories apply to intellectual property, particularly computer software. This analysis is followed by a discussion of prevailing legislation in the United States, Europe, Japan, Asia, and China. The analysis is fortified by a comprehensive coverage of the Uruguay Round. The work concludes in favor of the free flow of information, which yields overwhelming benefits to a globally integrated market.

This volume, which grew out of a study conducted by the East-West Center, analyzes the friction in telecommunications trade between the United States and Japan and the consequent imposition of the Super 301 clause on Japan. Giving both the U.S. and Japanese viewpoints, the book discusses trade in telecommunications and the events that led to the Super 301 clause and the Strategic Impediments Initiative. It also provides an in-depth analysis of GATT issues and what may be expected from the current Uruguay Round. Telecommunications deregulation and privatization in both countries are carefully assessed as are the social, policial, and cultural implications of the trade conflict, which led to President Bush's recent visit to Japan. The first book to focus specifically on trade in communications equipment between the United States and Japan, the volume fills a critical gap in the literature.