Room 1037, 690 Building

Duration: 30 minutes

Abstract: In the 2000s, several Latin American countries signed Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with the United States. These treaties contain specific chapters on telecommunications, which seek to promote competition and foreign investment in this market. This paper uses a difference-in-differences econometric strategy to evaluate the impact of these provisions on the telecommunications industry. The results show that the FTAs produced an estimated reduction of 45.5% on the Average Revenue per User (ARPU) in the subscribing countries, and that this effect was mainly due to the decrease in the prices of mobile calls, which was 34%. No significant impacts of the FTAs are found on fixed and mobile telephone penetration, nor in private investment in these services.