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The 2020 Annual Economics Meetings: Tacos, GDPR, Machine Learning, and New Ways to Randomize

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This year’s annual Allied Social Sciences Association (ASSA) meetings were held in sunny San Diego from January 3-5, 2020. Over 13,000 economists from around the world convened for job market interviews and to present research to members of the American Economics Association and American Finance Association, among others. With so many economists in one place, even offsite taquerias were filled with conversations of new research methods and econometric tools. Over my tacos and guacamole, I could hear economists, young and old, discussing the latest papers, datasets, and new machine learning […]

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“Brent Skorup and Eli Dourado on Airspace Auctions and Supersonic Aviation” (Two Think Minimum)

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Sarah Oh: Hi and welcome back to TPI’s podcast, Two Think Minimum. It’s Wednesday, September 18, 2019 and I’m Sarah Oh, Senior Fellow at the Technology Policy Institute. I’m joined today by Tom Lenard, Senior Fellow and President Emeritus at the Technology Policy Institute. Today we’re excited to talk with Brent Skorup and Eli Dourado on airspace auctions and supersonic aviation. Brent Skorup is a lawyer and Senior Research Fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. His research areas include telecommunications, transportation, technology regulation, and wireless policy. He serves […]

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What Tech is at CES and Where is It From?

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Every year, after Christmas presents are given and exchanged in December, tech nerds trek out to Las Vegas for one last gift: the annual Consumer Electronics Show. “It’s part of my job,” we tell people in our best world-weary, I-am-so-important voices. And then we watch drones fly in cages, play with AR/VR headsets, and stand mesmerized wondering how (and why) Ford managed to hang a car on a wall. OK, there’s more to CES than seeing cool tech (and wall-hangings). Businesspeople come to make deals, hundreds of panels of experts […]

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“Jonathan Make Discusses the Top Telecom Stories of 2019” (Two Think Minimum)

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Scott Wallsten: Hi and welcome back to TPI’s podcast, Two Think Minimum. I’m TPI president and senior fellow Scott Wallsten. It’s Friday, December 13th, 2019. We have with us today, Jonathan Make, who is executive editor of Communications Daily and telecom reporter extraordinaire, having spent the last 16 years, at least, covering the industry. And as always, I’m joined by my colleague, the inestimable TPI senior fellow Sarah Oh. As it’s nearing the end of the year, we thought that today we’d look back at some of the year’s biggest […]

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“Ligado Networks’ President and CEO Doug Smith and Chief Legal Officer Valerie Green” (Two Think Minimum)

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Tom Lenard: Hi and welcome back to TPI’s podcast, Two Think Minimum. It’s Wednesday, December 11th, 2019 and I’m Tom Lenard, senior fellow and president emeritus of the Technology Policy Institute. Today we’re excited to talk with Doug Smith and Valerie Green of Ligado Networks. Doug is the president and chief executive officer for Ligado and is responsible for directing the vision of the company and managing every aspect of its day to day operations. With more than 25 years of domestic and international telecom and wireless industry experience, Doug […]

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Econometrics in the Cloud: Robust Standard Errors in BigQuery ML

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This post is part two of a series about how to extend cloud-based data analysis tools – such as Google’s BigQuery ML – to handle specific econometrics requirements. In part 1, I showed how to compute coefficient standard errors in BigQuery. Often, however, heteroskedasticity or autocorrelation in the data means that the regression variance estimates – and thus the standard errors – will be biased. The solution to the heteroskedasticity standard error problem is to estimate robust standard errors (also known as Huber-White standard errors). These can be calculated easily in Stata using the robust option following […]

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Wine, Cheese, Digital Services, and Unicorns

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On the same day French digital policy officials were visiting Washington, spreading the message that the U.S. should work with its European allies to regulate the internet and its dominant giants, the USTR released its finding that France’s tax on digital services discriminates against U.S. digital companies, such as Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon. Compounding the damage, the U.S. is threatening to retaliate by imposing tariffs on French wine, cheese, hand bags and other products. This dispute threatens to harm consumers on both sides of the Atlantic. Personally, I don’t […]

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“Bryan Tramont of Wilkinson-Barker-Knauer on C-Band and the Future of Spectrum Policy” (Two Think Minimum)

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Scott Wallsten: Hi and welcome back to the Technology Policy Institute’s podcast, Two Think Minimum. It’s Tuesday, November 12th, 2019. I’m Scott Wallsten, President and Senior Fellow at TPI and I’m joined by my colleague and cohost TPI Senior Fellow Sarah Oh. Today we’re excited to talk with Bryan Tramont. Bryan is Managing Partner of Wilkinson Barker Knauer, a top tier law firm according to Chambers and Legal 500 Bryan offers strategic counsel to Fortune 100 companies, trade associations, small and midsize telecommunications and media companies, on all aspects of […]

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“Telecom and Spectrum in Mexico with Judith Mariscal” (Two Think Minimum)

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Scott Wallsten: Hi and welcome back to the Technology Policy Institute’s podcast, Two Think Minimum. Today is Wednesday, September 24th, 2019. I’m Scott Wallsten, TPI President and Senior Fellow. I am joined by Judith Mariscal who is a professor at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) and Executive Director of the Cyber Policy Center for Latin America. She’s a leading telecommunications scholar and easily the most knowledgeable and thoughtful person on telecom in Mexico. We’re thrilled that she’s spending a little bit of time with us now as a […]

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Huawei and ZTE: A Bargaining Chip No More?

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If FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s scheduling of a vote this week  to bar U.S. companies that receive subsidies from purchasing 5G equipment from Chinese firms like Huawei and ZTE isn’t enough, U.S. Attorney General William Barr’s strongly worded (supportive) letter to Pai on this FCC agenda item may signal greater clarity from the U.S. government on a major national security issue.   This spring, when the Technology Policy Institute hosted a panel to assess the costs and benefits of a Huawei ban, the White House seemed to be making up […]

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