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...

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...

Under Section 629 of the Communications Act, Congress directed the FCC to adopt regulations to promote a retail market for set-top boxes. The Commission's first attempt was the ill-fated CableCard experiment, which - by the Commission's own admission - was a dismal failure. In response, the...

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...

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...

Today, the Federal Government has assignments for about half of what is considered to be “beachfront” spectrum. However, most agree that Government agencies, and the Government as a whole, use and manage spectrum resources inefficiently. As such, much attention is now focused on improving...

Proposed legislation in California (Assembly Bill No. 437) aims to prohibit actors from voluntarily selling something they are willing to sell— contractual exclusivity. In this BULLETIN, we demonstrate that the proposed California legislation will reduce the compensation to actors, either...

Prior to the invention of the Internet, shopping for goods was relatively simple: a consumer visited a brick-and-mortal retailer and selected a product from what was available or, for some retailers, shopped using a catalog. Today, a simple Internet search may return a bewildering number of...

Over the past two decades, digital piracy has wreaked havoc on the music industry, with industry revenues falling over 60% between 1999 and 2009. Despite rising income from streaming services, total revenues (in real dollars) today remain well-below their historic peaks. Adding misery to an...