Economic Regulation

Economic regulation is in many cases intended to mimic the constraints of competition in non-competitive markets, but achieving that is complex. Regulatory decisions and remedies seek to protect consumers and reduce barriers to competition, but in doing so they can make or break businesses and potentially reduce returns on substantial and often risky capital investments.

As a provider in a regulated industry, understanding the potential impact of regulatory interventions is critical. Informing decisions appropriately requires detailed economic, technical, and commercial analysis. Communicating a company’s views and analyses clearly and concisely to stakeholders and to regulators is vital to the interests of the business. The complexity of highly technical analyses and multiple messages from other interested parties, however, can make this hard to achieve.

As a regulator, rapidly changing technologies and consumer preferences, changing economic conditions, and often a shortage of information make it increasingly difficult to perform the necessary detailed analyses to support decision of whether and how to regulate.

Berkeley Research Group’s regulatory experts offer deep expertise in a wide range of disciplines, combined with hands-on sector experience, to ensure the optimal application of technical analyses for prevailing market conditions and the goals to be achieved. Further, our experts and in-house communications specialists have extensive experience addressing stakeholder relationships and communicating complex messages clearly and concisely.

When conflicts and disputes arise—between providers, between providers and regulators, or with competition authorities—our experts provide independent analyses and opinions, bringing knowledge and experience from economic regulation across several sectors and different regulatory models practiced worldwide.

What We Do

BRG offers expertise to regulators, regulated firms, investors, and other stakeholders in performing detailed economic and technical analyses related to the following areas, among others:

• Market definition and dominance analyses
• Cost modeling
• Cost-benefit analyses
• Incentive scheme design
• Non-discrimination remedy design
• Technical analysis
• Interconnection and access definitions
• Spectrum allocation optimization and pricing
• Retail and wholesale price setting
• Compliance and market condition monitoring
• Modeling of systemic risks
• Regulation of the labor market