There is general concern that producer subsidies distort competition. We examine a telecommunications subsidy system that transfers money from low cost regions to high cost regions of the U.S. Even though the system is designed to be competitively neutral, we find evidence that the system,...

Abstract The US debate about net neutrality has been unusually contentious for a telecommunications regulatory issue, most recently culminating in a 2017 reversal of a 2015 decision to apply traditional telephone regulations, written for a monopoly era, to internet service providers. This...

Government regulators often establish maximum prices for regulated services. This paper explains the proper economic principles for establishing such constraints. The principles imply a range - an upper limit and a lower limit - that constrain the regulator's discretion. Principles emerging from...

We study the competition effects of platforms entering their own marketplaces in the context of mobile applications. Using a rich panel dataset of monthly observed applications on the most prominent mobile ecosystems, Apple and Android, we seek to understand how the launch of a new application...

We study the competition effects of platforms entering their own marketplaces in the context of mobile applications. Using a rich panel dataset of monthly observed applications on the most prominent mobile ecosystems, Apple and Android, we seek to understand how the launch of a new application...

A current controversy in antitrust is use of the consumer welfare standard (CWS). CWS in effect states that a merger or anticompetitive business practice is illegal if it makes consumers worse off than they would be otherwise (Wilson, 2019). Salop (2010) holds that Congress intended something...

Lifeline is a unique nationwide public assistance program created by the Federal Communications Commission to provide price discounts to low-income telephone subscribers. Recently there has been concern that program participation rates are low and that there is great variation in participation...