[Translate to English:] Research Institute for Regulatory Economics

Net Neutrality

The Net Neutrality Regulation adopted by the European Commission in 2015 aims to protect end-users and simultaneously guarantee the continued functioning of the internet ecosystem as an engine of innovation.

In achieving this, strict net neutrality principles are considered as essential prohibiting

i) discrimination,

ii) blocking and

iii) throttling or prioritization in the transmission of data in the internet.

There exist, however, only a very few U.S. based empirical investigations and there is essentially no reliable evidence on the causal effects of net neutrality policies on the basis of EU or OECD related data. This research project aims to fill this gap by providing reliable and very first estimation results on the causal impact of net neutrality policies using a comprehensive and most recent OECD panel data set for 34 member states for the period from 2003 to 2018. 

The project “An Empirical Assessment of Recent Net Neutrality Policies in OECD Member States” is based on external cooperation with researchers from Weizenbaum Insitute Berlin and Polytechnic University of Turin. The project has been initiated in January 2020 and  lasts until end of 2020.

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Funded by the WU Anniversary Fund of the City of Vienna.