Teleshopping requires a tele- phone connection, either to call in an order orally or by fax, or to place an order while surfing the Web. Regulation can interfere with teleshopping by setting excessive prices for calls or thwarting Inter- net connections. Regulatory pricing policy in most nations sets much higher prices for international calling than for domestic calls over a similar distance. For teleshoppers to be able to buy products, they must have access to an easy means of cross-currency transactions through credit cards or electronic fund transfers. Here regulation of financial institutions can intervene to make such trans- actions difficult, slow, and costly.
Some countries make transactions in other currencies difficult and expensive.
Likewise, in some coun- tries international banking transactions are subject to distorting fees and taxes. In some countries, parcel delivery is un- regulated and competitive, while in others it is heavily regulated, largely to prevent competition with the delivery of packages by the postal system. In the latter cases, parcel delivery is slower and much more costly. For example, a OCR for page 353 Internationalizing Regulatory Reform 353 17. Shirley and Galal, Bureaucrats in Business, p. 39.