Abstract The economics literature on Net Neutrality (NN) has been largely critical of NN regulation on the basis of theoretical findings that NN violations can be both welfare improving and welfare deteriorating, depending on the circumstances of the case in question. Thus, an ex post competition policy approach would be preferable to a strict ex ante prohibition of NN violations. In contrast, the current paper argues that NN regulation is largely ineffective, in particular, when it comes to the prohibition of fast lanes and other quality of service (QoS) differentiations, and to a lesser extent, when it comes to the zero price rule. NN regulation is only effective in preventing the blocking of specific content and in preventing the favoring of ISP owned content and in preventing some price discriminations. These are also areas where NN regulations are more likely to be welfare-enhancing. Where they are ineffective, NN regulations are likely to create inefficiencies through the cost and allocative inefficiencies caused by NN bypass. The paper ends with a call for theoretical and empirical economic analyses of NN circumvention techniques.

中文翻译：

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净中立法规：什么都没做？

摘要关于网络中立性（NN）的经济学文献在很大程度上基于理论发现，即根据所涉案件的具体情况，违反NN既可以改善福利，也可以恶化福利，因此对NN监管提出了很大的批评。因此，采用事后竞争政策的方法比严格事前禁止违反NN的方法更为可取。相反，当前论文认为，NN监管在很大程度上是无效的，特别是在禁止快速通道和其他服务质量（QoS）差异方面，而在较小程度上涉及零价格规则。NN法规仅在防止阻止特定内容以及防止偏爱ISP拥有的内容以及防止某些价格歧视方面有效。在这些领域中，NN法规更有可能增强福利。在无效的情况下，NN规则很可能会因NN绕行造成的成本和分配效率低下而造成效率低下。本文最后呼吁对NN规避技术进行理论和经验经济学分析。