发展中国家普遍服务义务的经济分析

Universal Service Obligations in Developing Countries

本文构建一个简单的非对称信息模型,分析发展中国家特定的普遍服务问题。在模型中,政府与垄断企业的非对称信息产生于在农村提供服务的边际成本,最优普遍服务政策可以用两种规制手段即资费和网络投资来实现。本文对区别定价和统一定价两种情形进行了对比分析,得出的结论是:在实施区别定价时,与完全信息相比,不完全信息将提高农村地区的资费水平,并且减小相应的网络覆盖面积;而在实施统一定价时,农村地区的定价可能降低,但这是以网络覆盖面积的减小为代价。模型结果还表明,合谋的威胁会弱化企业的激励。有意思的是,在这两种定价机制下,企业和纳税人这两种不同的利益集团均有同规制者合谋的动机。实际上,纳税人利益集团的存在,强化了规制者和企业之间的防止合谋约束,并且为了减少规制者同纳税人利益集团的合谋收益,即使规制者具有高成本信息,也会使配置结果扭曲。

In this paper we develop a simple model in which the government has asymmetric information about a monopolistic firm's marginal cost of providing services in the rural area. In our model the optimal universal service policy is implemented by two regulatory instruments, i.e., pricing and network investment. We conduct our analysis under both discriminatory pricing and uniform pricing. We find that under discriminatory pricing, asymmetric information leads to a higher price and a smaller network for the rural area than those under full information. While it may indeed induce a lower price for the rural area under uniform pricing, it is achieved at a cost of smaller network. Our results show that the threat of collusion weakens the incentives given to the firm. An interesting finding is that both the firm and the interest group of taxpayers have incentives to collude with the supervisor under both pricing regimes. Indeed, the existence of this new interest group hardens the collusion proof-ness constraint for the supervisor and the firm. Moreover, the allocations are distorted even if the high-cost information is revealed by the supervisor to reduce the stake of collusion between the supervisor and the interest group of taxpayers.