Efficiency and productivity analyses are considered to be a comprehensive tool for assessing the performance of any economic agent. For the telecommunications industry such analysis has being the focus of academic studies for various time periods covering different levels of the industry, at a global, regional, national or firm level.
Until recently, this type of study has focused on the impacts and outcomes of global phenomena on the performance of the industry including deregulation and privatization of incumbent public telecommunications companies, establishment of an independent regulatory body, technology aspects.
The industry is witnessing changes and challenges caused by technological progress and newly emerging and ever increasing data driven services. In such dynamic situations and time dimension, interests in the characteristics of efficiency and productivity of the telecommunications industry are again rising. Circumstances require that an assessment of efficiency and productivity be made in a broader scope with and account for the macroeconomic context and most influential technology factors and to provide the latest evidence to be useful for the next round of policy development.
With objective of meeting these requirements, the current dissertation has two aims. First of all, it aims to identify the impacts and extent of macroeconomic factors on the efficiency level of the telecommunications industry, the total factor productivity growth of 16 OECD countries, and their trends over the years. Secondly, the goal is to provide recent evidence and patterns of TFP growth of the telecommunications industry in these countries, and the Mongolian mobile communications industry as a representative of small developing countries with a transition economy. The first part of the dissertation analyses technical efficiency levels and TFP growth of 16 OECD countries for the period 1987-2011 using the stochastic frontier analysis method. The average technical efficiency score of these 16 countries was found to be 82.25 percent which is higher than any other previous studies found. The average annual TFP growth of these countries was determined to be 3.88 which is a moderately low rate in comparison to estimates found in previous similar studies. The study reveals the declining influence of economic factors on the efficiency level of the telecommunications industry of these countries, while finding that demographic and social factors have a moderate influence on the efficiency level. The most important factor contributing to TFP growth was mobile communications technologies, which serve as a backbone of TFP growth and provide greater opportunity for technical efficiency enhancements. The results highlight that the introduction of each generation of new mobile technologies led to a substantial increase of technical efficiency levels with consequent impact on TFP growth. However, the study also found that the impacts of the generations of mobile technology on efficiency and productivity had different patterns, which revealed differences in policy, market, and competitive environments and highlighting the burden of technology co-generation, which resulted in insufficient realization of the full potentials of 3G mobile technologies.
The second part of the dissertation, analyzing the Mongolian mobile communications industry, reveals that government policy supporting competition and private sector investment has resulted in a significant increase in mobile penetration rate, an increase in market share among the total telecommunications industry. Estimation of TFP growth of the Mongolian mobile communications industry using a DEA based Malmquist productivity index has method found an 68.7 percent increase of productivity between 2007 and 2011, or nearly 14.0 percent per annum, demonstrating that the reform policy package has been successful.
전세계 원격통신산업은 혁신과 테크놀로지 변화, 규제완화, 민영화, 경쟁으로 인해 역동적이고 극적인 변화를 겪어왔고, 이는 결국 정보통신 서비스 시장 및 소비자 수요에 변화를 가져왔다. 이러한 역동적인 진보와 혁신은 원격통신산업 자체를 자극했다. 원격통신 서비스 공급자의 전통적인 비즈니스 모델은 과거로 사라졌고 세계 주요 서비스 공급자들의 수입은 지난 몇 년간 지속적인 하락을 겪어왔다.
원격통신산업에서 나타난 이러한 다면적인 현상들은 그러한 상황을 포괄적으로 분석하고 적절한 방식으로 이해하도록 유도한다. 그리고 원격통신산업의 효율성 및 생산성 분석이 최근 몇 년간 다시 관심을 얻고 있는 것처럼 보이는데, 이는 이 분야에서 몇몇 최신 연구들이 등장함에 따라 목격되는 바이다. 원격통신산업의 효율성 및 생산성 분석에 관한 연구들 대부분은, 경쟁, 민영화, 독립적인 규제기구 설립, 테크놀로지가 원격통신산업의 성과에 미치는 영향을 포함하여 정책 및 규제 관련 변화가 낳은 효과를 평가함으로써 실행된다.
그러나 원격통신산업과 그 성과에 대한 연구가 더 폭넓은 범위를 다루어야 한다는 점은 주목할 만한 가치가 있다. 앞서 언급했듯이 원격통신산업이 경제
