The Communications Act requires the Federal Communications Commission to assess whether proposed spectrum license transactions serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity. We review the FCC’s implementation of this component of the Act. We provide a tractable economic model of...

In its attempts to deter and prosecute big rigging, U.S. antitrust authorities have focused on sealed-bid procurements, rather than on ascending-bid auctions. One possible justification for this focus is the idea, supported by the existing theoretical literature, that collusion creates...

Carbon allowance auctions are a component of existing and proposed regional cap-and-trade programs in the U.S. and are also included in recent bills in the U.S. Congress that would establish a national cap-and-trade program in the U.S. to regulate greenhouse gases (“carbon”). We discuss and...

This article reviews several issues confronted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over the past year and discusses some of the economic analysis employed by the FCC in examining these issues. The article also identifies areas in which future academic research would be valuable to the...

We modify the basic Gehrig (1993) model. In this model, individual agents are either buyers or sellers. They can choose between joining the search market, joining the monopolistic intermediary or remaining inactive. In the search market, agents are randomly matched and the price at which...

We study the role of whistleblowing in the following inspection game. Two agents who compete for a prize can either behave legally or illegally. After the competition, a controller investigates the agents’ behavior. This inspection game has a unique (Bayesian) equilibrium in mixed strategies....

Price stickiness plays a decisive role in many macroeconomic models, yet why prices are sticky remains a puzzle. We develop a microeconomic model in which two competing firms are free to set prices, but face uncertainty about the state of demand. With some probability, there is a positive demand...

We study the role of whistle-blowing in the following inspection game. Two agents who compete for a valuable prize can either behave legally or illegally. After the competition, a controller investigates the agents' behavior. This control game has a unique equilibrium in mixed strategies. We...