Using econometric methods and data from prior spectrum auctions, this paper evaluates the design of the FCC's Auction 97. We find that the elements of the auction's design, including the size of license areas, reduced auction revenues by as much as $21 billion

With the D.C. Circuit’s recent ruling in Comcast v. FCC, the court has thrown the Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to promote an “Open Internet” into legal limbo. In response, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has announced that he intends to seek to impose a “Third Way”,...

In 1999, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) began to grant incumbent local exchange carriers (“LECs”) pricing flexibility on special access services in some Metropolitan Statistical Areas (“MSAs”) when specific evidence of competitive alternatives is present. The propriety...

In the last year, many advocates have called for the imposition of Carterfone regulation on the wireless industry. The FCC partially heeded this call when it imposed open platform regulations on one substantial block of spectrum (the Upper C block) that was recently part of the record-setting...

In this Policy Paper, we analyze the variation in broadband adoption rates among the respective United States. Significantly, we find that 91% of the variation is explained by demographic and economic conditions, such as household income, education and, most significantly, income inequality. Our...

In this Policy Bulletin, 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...

In this paper, we present a new and policy-relevant means of comparing the broadband adoption rates among countries the Broadband Performance Index (BPI). Unlike the OECD, which ranks countries' broadband performance using raw, per capita subscription data alone, the BPI is a policy-relevant...

The United States Department of Commerce, Technology Administration provided support to the Phoenix Center to study the causes and potential solutions of the Valley of Death for technology development in the United States under Study Contract No. SB1341-05-2-0023 administered by KT Consulting,...

The unbundling paradigm contained in the 1996 Telecommunications Act was one of the most ambitious regulatory experiments in American history. Yet, despite high expectations, less than a decade after codification the experiment was over. Without making any consumer welfare claims about the...

Cars are expensive and most consumers know to shop dealers for the best prices. Yet, there is little to no empirical evidence on the price effects of intra-brand competition among different dealer franchises for the same automobile model. In this paper, using large samples of transactions for...