As economists with significant experience in competition and regulatory matters, we offer comments on the remedies proposed by the Department of Justice to address the competitive effects flowing from the proposed merger of Sprint and T-Mobile, as recognized by the DOJ's Complaint. We find that...

Last year's Annual Report and Analysis of Competitive Market Conditions with Respect to Mobile Wireless broke new ground by not concluding, as had prior reports, that the wireless services market was “effectively competitive.” This year's report did the same. The 14th and 15th reports review...

As the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) considers how to allocate the broadcasters' spectrum in the upcoming "incentive auction," it should be guided by economic principles designed to maximize social benefits. To date, the spectrum policy debate largely has been driven by considerations...

Google distributes proprietary applications for its open-source Android mobile operating system (OS) free of charge. Some of those applications (apps) are offered together as a suite of apps known as Google Mobile Services (GMS). Manufacturers of mobile devices can agree, pursuant to Google's...

Regulators in many countries have asserted that setting asymmetric mobile termination rates (MTRs) between the incumbent mobile telephony operator and its smaller rivals is an efficacious means by which to help entrants attain efficient scale. We investigate empirically the efficacy of this...

For a decade or more, proponents of the royalty-stacking conjecture have claimed that, when an end-user product (such as the smartphone) incorporates multiple standard-essential patents (SEPs), the aggregate SEP royalty might be so high as to make it infeasible for manufacturers to make a...

The taxation of goods and services by a state is considered efficient when consumer welfare is maximized subject to the condition that the local government raises a specified amount of revenues. According to the Ramsey principle of optimal taxation of commodities, an efficient commodity tax...

When a person uses the traditional wireline telephone network to call another person on his cell phone, the fixed network must transfer the call to the mobile network to which the recipient subscribes. The fixed network is said to have provided originating access for the call, and the mobile...