In most countries, wireless communications rely on administrative allocation of radio spectrum. The inefficiencies associated with this centralized approach have led economists, starting with Coase in 1959, to suggest "propertyzing" radio spectrum. Critics of this approach assert that property...

Before the enactment of the 1996 General Telecommunications Law in Guatemala the radio waves were owned and licensed by the state following the model of the US Federal Communications Commission. The radio spectrum license was a revocable authorization for the licensee to use a given frequency...

This book analyzes the effectiveness of the federal government's vacillating regulatory policy toward the cable television industry.

This book analyzes the effectiveness of the federal government's vacillating regulatory policy toward the cable television industry.

This significant new volume contains incisive chapters on a number of prominent concerns, including changes in the British system of utility regulation, the spectrum allocation question, liberalisation of EU energy markets, security of supply issues, reform in the European postal sector, the...

A modern defense of public utility regulation has arisen from the "transactions costs" literature. Traditional economic theorists called for government to establish regulated, franchise monopolies to guard against over-investment and wasteful duplication in natural monopoly (i.e., cost...

Two recent court rulings have forced both law and economics to seriously reevaluate emerging marketplaces. In Sony "Corporation v. Universal Studios" (1983), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that videocassette recorders do "not" infringe upon the patent rights of a movie producer whose creation is...

South African apartheid is a social system arising from the economic conflict of competitive interest groups. During the past four centuries, this struggle has not been linear: Changing economic and demographic conditions have tended to make white and non-white subclasses net complementary...

Economic analysis of spectrum policy focuses on government revenues derived via competitive bidding for licenses. Auctions generating high bids are identified as successful and those with lower receipts as fiascoes. Yet spectrum policies that create rents impose social costs. Most obviously,...

Incumbent telecommunications carriers have been mandated to share their networks with new retail service providers at regulated wholesale rates. This regulatory structure creates options which incumbent systems must write and which all potential entrants are awarded at a price of zero. Intense...