For decades, economists have encouraged regulators to implement more efficient telephone pricing policies in order to eliminate the pervasive cross-subsidies from usage-based services to basic connections. Slowly, and reluctantly, regulators have moved in this direction. The most recent...

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...

Many policymakers have recently expressed concern over the practice of multichannel video programming distributors ("MVPDs") such as cable and satellite video providers, to "bundle" a large number and variety of channels together into a "take-it-or-leave-it" package. In this BULLETIN, we...

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...

With unemployment levels at record highs, policymakers are struggling to find any means possible to put Americans back to work. In this PAPER, we use the 2007 Computer and Internet Use Supplement of the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey to estimate the effect of Internet use on job...

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 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...

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...

Recent reports on the financial consequences of UNE-P sales for Bell Operating Companies have drawn additional attention to long-standing complaints by the BOCs that such sales are confiscatory, and amount to "subsidized competition." This paper subjects the conclusions of these claims and the...

In this paper, we estimate demand curves for unbundled loops sold by incumbent local exchange telecommunications carriers to their retail rivals. Of primary interest are the cross-price effects between unbundled loops purchased with and without unbundled switching. As expected, we find...