With the National Broadband Plan's promise of an additional 500 MHz of spectrum for commercial purposes, the question of how to allocate those resources among competing uses and users will dominate the communications policy debate over the coming years. In this policy paper, we provide a...

The issue of whether the government should assign the D Block of spectrum to public safety or auction the spectrum for commercial use requires an assessment of the relative benefits and costs of these two alternatives. We propose such a framework, and preliminary analysis suggests that the 10...

Since broadband distribution networks, both wireless and wireline, require large levels of capital expenditures on long-lived assets, a Broadband Service Provider's incentive to invest in modern broadband infrastructure is influenced not only by current regulation but also by expectations...

Antitrust policy and mergers provide a steady source of material for economic analysis, both theoretical and empirical. This is no surprise; in few other areas are the problems so obviously economic, so practical, and of such substantial policy significance. Seminal articles in economics such as...

In this perspective, I provide a detailed review of the Consumer Federation of America's attempt to calculate a “big number” in the context of the FCC's development of a new regulatory scheme for special access services. As shown here, CFA's claim is based on a method that is internally...

In this perspective I have shown that the monthly prices of set-top boxes for municipally-owned and operated video systems are equal to those charged by private providers. Consequently, the claim that the prices charged by private providers for set-top boxes are “unjust”,...

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 aimed to “provide for a procompetitive, de-regulatory national policy framework designed to accelerate rapidly private sector deployment of advanced telecommunications and information technologies and services to all Americans….” Key to the Federal...

With the rising cost of broadcast programming and the high-profile of “blackouts,” Retransmission Consent has earned a place at the forefront of the modern communications policy debate. To provide a framework under which to evaluate the issue, we present in this PAPER an economic theory of...

The WIK-Consult Report makes several serious errors in its analysis, including, but certainly not limited to, a focus on irrelevant factors, inaccurate computations, self-contradictory claims, and improper benchmarks. Given these errors, the Commission should accord no probative weight to the...

As detailed in this perspective, the view that state auto franchise laws are protectionist is inconsistent with the evidence and theory used to support the claim. Moreover, an economic model of car and service sales shows that franchise laws, by introducing an intermediary between the individual...