In the 2000s, the United States signed free trade agreements (FTAs) with several Latin American countries. These treaties were among the first to 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 exogenous reforms in the telecommunications industry. The results show that the FTAs prompted an estimated reduction of 45.5% in average revenue per user in the subscribing countries, and that this competitive effect was mainly due to the decrease of 34% in the prices of mobile calls. FTAs are not found to have significant impacts on fixed and mobile phone penetration, nor on private investment in these services, reflecting their lower profitability after the strengthening of competition.

中文翻译：

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自由贸易协定对国内市场的影响：来自拉丁美洲电信部门的证据

2000 年代，美国与几个拉美国家签署了自由贸易协定（FTA）。这些条约是最早包含关于电信的具体章节的条约，旨在促进该市场的竞争和外国投资。本文使用差异中的计量经济学策略来评估这些外生改革对电信行业的影响。结果表明，FTA 导致订阅国每用户平均收入估计下降了 45.5%，而这种竞争效应主要是由于移动电话价格下降了 34%。没有发现自由贸易协定对固定电话和移动电话普及率产生重大影响，对这些服务的私人投资也没有显着影响，这反映了竞争加强后它们的盈利能力较低。