Benchmarking telecoms regulation – The Telecommunications Regulatory Governance Index (TRGI)

In this study an index of the effectiveness of the institutional design of telecommunication regulators for 142 countries that belong to the International Telecommunications Union is produced. This index – the Telecommunications Regulatory Governance Index (TRGI) – ranks these countries regionally (The Americas, The EU27, Other Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Northern Africa and Africa) as well as globally. Data from Transparency International are used to measure general political governance for these same 142 countries and show the correspondence or lack thereof between the TRGI and political transparency. Strong empirical evidence is found that countries with better institutions have telecommunication regulators that consistently score higher in the TRGI.