The Degree of Commitment to Regulator Independence: Measurement and Impact

Abstract

This study computes measures of the degree of independence in practice of telecommunications regulators for Latin American and Caribbean countries in a new data set for 23 countries between 1990 and 2004. We focus on the degree to which governments are able to commit to preserve regulator independence. We combine this information with data on legal independence to construct indices of regulator independence that are more realistic than those used by the existing literature. Econometric results confirm that regulator independence has a positive impact on telecommunications performance, but purely legal indices appear to under-estimate this impact.