Editors' foreword

The Review of Network Economics

Volume 1, Issue 1 - March 2002

Editors' foreword

Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Review of Network Economics. As you can see by the articles, the journal fills a somewhat different role to that served by existing journals. There are two main points of differentiation, both of which are reflected in our title.

The first is the subject matter we cover. What we call 'network economics' refers to the economics of network industries such as broadcasting, energy, on-line services, payment systems, postal services, software, stock exchanges, telecommunications, transportation networks and water. A striking feature of this area of economics is the high degree of overlap between the work of academics, policy makers, and consultants. This then motivates our second point of differentiation.

The journal's focus is on 'reviewing' existing works rather than providing new models or econometric results. The goal is to help policy makers, academics, and practitioners better understand the relevant economics literature, as it applies to network industries. This will involve surveys of the existing literature, providing new perspectives on policy debates, as well as reviews and critiques of recently published articles and still unpublished working papers.

In the network industries, policy makers and consultants often have to make decisions on the relevance of recent papers, even though it may be years before the work will be published, and even longer before the work is incorporated into the literature. This journal provides an avenue for the publication of articles that help speed up this process. It also provides a place for the insights from older works to be synthesized, and fresh perspectives to be offered.

By providing a clearinghouse of ideas, and the dissemination of insightful critiques, it is hoped readers will be able to gain a better understanding of the relevant issues, and that this will improve the quality of decision making by policy makers, and debate among researchers.

Co-editors: John Panzar and Julian Wright

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