The design of the FCC spectrum-license auction is a case study in the application of economic theory. Auction theory helped address policy questions such as: Should an open auction or a sealed-bid auction be used? Should the licenses be auctioned sequentially or simultaneously? Should the...

We analyze the incentives of a vertically integrated firm, which is a regulated monopolist in the wholesale market and competes with an entrant in the retail market, to invest and to give access to a new wholesale technology. The new technology represents a non-drastic innovation that produces...

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 requires incumbent monopoly phone companies to lease elements of their networks to rivals. An important policy question is whether these unbundled elements are substitutes for entry modes that are more facilities-based. In this article, we estimate demand...

This article combines a discrete choice model of demand for residential local telephone access and an optimal price regulation model to estimate the welfare weights that state regulators implicitly place on consumers with different incomes and locations. I find no evidence of a bias towards...

The combinatorial clock auction is becoming increasingly popular for large-scale spectrum awards and other uses, replacing more traditional ascending or clock auctions. We describe some surprising properties of the auction, including a wide range of ex post equilibria with demand expansion,...

The United Kingdom (UK) has spent less on infrastructure compared to other OECD countries over the past three decades. The perceived quality of UK infrastructure assets is close to the OECD average but lower than in other G7 countries. Capacity constraints have emerged in some sectors, such as...

Regulatory reform efforts in a broad range of industries have resulted in increased importance of competitive forces as a means to allocate resources and improve economic efficiency. A number of indicators suggest that such forces have been stronger in the United States than in most other OECD...

Product market regulation in the non-manufacturing sectors of OECD countries: measurement and highlights This paper describes a new set of indicators that measure differences in the regulation of non-manufacturing sectors of OECD countries over the past three decades. The indicators focus on...

This document presents the new 2013 set of the OECD Regulatory Impact (REGIMPACT) indicator. It measures the impact of regulatory barriers to competition in non-manufacturing sectors on all industries, through intermediate inputs. The paper describes how the indicator is calculated and discusses...

In 2009 the Australian government launched what it claims to be "the single largest infrastructure project in Australia’s history". The project involves building an ultra-fast national broadband network (the "NBN") relying mainly on fibre-to-the-premises ("FTTP") technology. The project is...