Access to networks: economic and constitutional connections.

Cornell Law Review, May, 2003 by Spulber, Daniel F.; Yoo, Christopher S.

A fundamental transformation is taking place in the basic approach to regulating network industries. Policy makers are in the process of abandoning their century-old commitment to rate regulation in favor of a new regulatory approach known as access regulation. Rather than controlling the price of outputs, the new approach focuses on compelling access to and mandating the price of inputs. Unfortunately, this shift in regulatory policy has not been met with an accompanying shift in the manner in which regulatory authorities regulate prices. Specifically, policy makers have continued to base rates on either historical or replacement cost.

We argue that this fundamental shift in regulatory approach demands an equally fundamental shift in the approach to setting...

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