Conflicting National Policies: The Creation of the Euro and the Rebalancing of Telecommunications Prices

Abstract

Government departments have diverse interests, and on certain occasions, the need to achieve an objective in one department may lead to the adoption of inefficient policies in other areas, with long-lasting consequences. In this paper, we analyze the rebalancing of the telecommunications tariffs that took place in the European Union before and after the liberalization of the market in 1998. We show that the objective of satisfying the Maastricht inflation condition to allow participation in the European Monetary Union from 1999 led some national governments to block the rebalancing of telecommunications tariffs. Specifically, we demonstrate that in the years immediately before the liberalization of the telecommunications market, those countries that faced greater difficulty achieving the inflation objectives of the Maastricht Treaty reduced, rather than increased, the prices of local telephone calls and line rental. Furthermore, these countries did not intensify efforts to rebalance their tariffs after the creation of the euro. Our paper also shows that in this period the countries that diverged most from the inflation condition invested less in their telecommunications infrastructure.