Market definition is an essential ingredient to competitive and regulatory analysis. Yet, there is significant disparity regarding the definition of the relevant geographic market for high-capacity circuits, commonly referred to as Special Access services. Given the present debate over expanding...

In this article, we provide a focused economic analysis of the welfare effect of state and local regulation on communications services and, in particular, on the wireless segment of the telecommunications industry. We find that when local regulation in one jurisdiction has sufficiently large...

Countries around the world are increasingly concerned as to whether the adoption of broadband technology by their respective citizens is sufficient to support economic growth and social development. Unfortunately, such concerns are often expressed in terms of where a country ranks among its...

In practice, copyright is treated by economists and analysts as a tradeoff between monopoly and the incentive to create new works. This tradeoff is between stark opposites – power and innovation. Yet, in reality, copyrighted works face numerous close substitutes. In this paper, we formally...

One of the most heated debates in the current efforts to re-write the Communications Act has been whether the federal government should impose "Network Neutrality" requirements on broadband service providers. While we argue neither for nor against the need for Network Neutrality legislation in...

This POLICY PAPER presents an economic model showing how incumbent local exchange carriers may deter efficient facilities-based entry for high capacity loop facilities through the use of quantity-discount contracts for Special Access services. Since efficient entry is deterred, these contracts...

This Paper discusses important economic characteristics of local exchange markets and the firms that participate therein. First, this Paper explains that entry into the local exchange market requires large fixed and sunk costs, making entry risky and necessitating scale economies. Consequently,...

This Policy Paper discusses important economic characteristics of local exchange markets and the firms that participate therein. First, this Policy Paper, building on the work in PHOENIX CENTER POLICY PAPER NO. 10, explains that entry into the local exchange market requires large fixed and sunk...

The purpose of patent policy is to balance the incentive to invent against the ability of the economy to utilize and incorporate new inventions and innovations. Substandard patents that upset this balance impose deadweight losses and other costs on the economy. In this paper, we examine some of...