The policy world is awash with worries about spectrum shortages as demand for wireless services grows. Using data on more than 69,000 licenses from every FCC spectrum auction since 1996, this paper disentangles and quantifies the factors that differently contribute to license value. I find that,...

Over the past twenty years we have seen the emergence of an important phenomenon in the practice of modern regulation — cooperative bargaining between the regulator and the regulated over a “bundle” of seemingly unrelated issues. Because of the multiplicity of issues being adjudicated...

The distinguishing feature of two-sided markets is that the pricing structure, that is, the relative prices charged to each side, matters. Regulators need to understand and account for the interdependence of prices in both sides. Some interventions that lower the prices on one side can result in...

This paper examines the impact of regulatory intervention to cut termination rates of calls from fixed lines to mobile phones. Under quite general conditions of competition, theory suggests that lower termination charges will result in higher prices for mobile subscribers, a phenomenon known as...

A recent phenomenon in competition policy is the acquisition of a private firm by an enterprise that is either wholly owned by government or in the midst of privatization. Such an acquisition poses the question of how public ownership may alter the incentives of a firm to engage in...

In this Perspective, we estimate the auction revenue potential of the AWS-3 spectrum if licensed without significant regulatory emcumbrances. Using data from two recent spectrum auctions, regression analysis is used to predict auction revenues. We estimate the 25 Mhz block of spectrum would sell...

In this paper we analyze the interplay between access to the last-mile network and net neutrality in the market for Internet access. We consider two competing Internet service providers (ISPs), which act as platforms between Internet users and content providers (CPs). One of the ISPs is...

This paper looks at changes in capital spending beginning in 2015 relative to a counterfactual rooted in the investment analysis conducted by the FCC in the 2018 Restoring Internet Freedom Order. The analysis shows that while the decline in capital spending in 2015 and 2016 stopped in 2017,...

In this PERSPECTIVE, I analyze the FCC's Form 477 data from 2015 and 2016 to contribute to a more informed and less impassioned take on rural broadband deployment and single provider markets. Three empirical facts emerge. First, single-provider areas have the same prices as multiple-provider...