Congress, state legislatures, and the Federal Communications Commission are all considering proposals to reform local video franchising to promote competitive entry. Consumers should welcome such reforms. We estimate that consumers pay an extra $8.4 billion annually in the form of higher rates...

Congress, state legislatures, and the Federal Communications Commission are all considering proposals to reform local video franchising to promote competitive entry. Consumers should welcome such reforms. We estimate that consumers pay an extra $8.4 billion annually in the form of higher rates...

The Federal Communications Commission spent approximately $1.2 billion on telecommunications and broadband regulation in fiscal 2004. Yet the actual cost is more than 60 times that amount. In a Mercatus Center working paper released earlier this year, I assembled estimates from scholarly...

We present solutions to each of the major delegation problems that arise when elected officials delegate rulemaking authority to government agencies. These problems include principal-agent issues, monopoly provision, information asymmetry, and tragedy of the commons. Rather than presenting our...

The use of Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) goals and measures to account for results of the Recovery Act, as the administration plans to do, is highly desirable. This increases the odds that taxpayers will get the maximum possible value for their dollars. The current approach would...

The underlying logic of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) suggests that federal programs should be evaluated based on empirical evidence that they actually produce the intended outcomes. This study applies the same logic to GPRA itself, investigating empirically whether GPRA may...

The Federal Communications Commission has spent $30 billion over the past decade on subsidies for phone service in high cost areas, but it has never developed outcome goals or measures to assess whether the subsidies have accomplished the intended results. Congress should require the FCC to...

Reform of federal programs and regulations that subsidize phone companies in rural areas is a perennial topic of debate at the Federal Communications Commission and in Congress. Economic analysys suggests several principles that would lead to a reform plan most conducive to overall consumer...

This study investigates the effects of the Commonwealth of Virginia's ban on direct wine shipments from out-of-state sellers on wine prices and variety available to consumers in the greater McLean, Virginia area. Our results indicate that Virginia's direct shipment ban reduces the varieties of...

In the authors' shared opinion, the economic evidence does not support the regulations proposed in the Commission's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Regarding Preserving the Open Internet and Broadband Industry Practices (the “NPRM”). To the contrary, the economic evidence provides no support...