The new institutional economics is a way of reasoning and approaching political economic problems. Its objective is to broaden out and modify the microeconomic foundation of economic theory by taking into account the way in which institutions, political and economic, affect the performance of economics over time. It provides a far richer context because it explores the many other dimensions besides just price and quantity, the basis for the comparative model of economic theory that shape the performance of economics through time.

While the new institutional economics has developed a body of theory to analyze the way in which political and economic institutions evolve, it has been short on empirical content. This study is a major contribution to filling in that lacuna. It is a careful and thoughtful study of the institutional features of regulation over telecommunications in five different countries, and draws from that empirical material important implications for developing sound regulatory policy that will improve the performance of that industry.

The study makes clear that, in attempting to provide a regulatory framework for an industry of such dynamic technological change as that of telecommunications, intelligent regulatory policy must take into account the institutional foundations and endowments of a nation, and the way those can be extended and applied. The study speaks for itself in demonstrating unequivocally the power of the new institutional economics to provide a far deeper foundation for economic policymaking, analyzing, and modeling then we have had heretofore.