When a pirated version of a copyrighted work is shared over the Internet, many online intermediaries may participate, exposing these firms to liability through legal concepts such as direct, contributory and vicarious infringement. Safe harbors largely shield intermediaries from “crippling...

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...

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...

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...

Copyright provides broad protection for artists and creators, but these rights are not without limit. In the United states, for instance, the U.S. Copyright Act permits the “fair use” of copyrighted works without infringing under certain circumstances. Other nations overwhelmingly employ the...

In this POLICY PAPER, we show how the Federal Communications Commission’s regulatory process may be used to impede the efficient functioning of a secondary market for commercial spectrum. In particular, we show that imposing (and threatening to impose) significant conditions when firms seek to...