Wayne Leighton and the rest of the team assigned to plan a new FCC Office of Economics and Analytics (OEA) have produced an excellent report—everything Chairman Pai could have hoped for when he announced his intention to establish such an office last April. The motivation for this initiative is the widespread concern that economic analysis has not been well utilized in some of the agency’s most important decisions. I, among many others, have previously expressed such concerns and recommended formation of an economics bureau along the lines the FCC’s report is now proposing.
The report contains a thoughtful and carefully researched analysis of how to better incorporate economics into the agency’s policy making, drawing on lessons from other agencies and adapting them to the needs and culture of the FCC. Among its most important recommendations, the report proposes that the “OEA should produce a separate, non-public memorandum on economic issues to accompany documents circulated to the Commission.” The commissioners will undoubtedly not always accept the recommendations of the economists, but their analysis, whether or not it supports the Commission’s ultimate position, should be available to the commissioners unfiltered.
The report includes many other worthwhile recommendations aimed at the culture of the agency, including revitalizing the research program and publishing working papers, which the policy office used to do routinely, and establishing an Honors Economist Program modeled on the successful Honors Attorneys Program.
Of course, much remains to be done in implementing the plan, including developing more specific procedures on how to incorporate economics into Commission decision-making and how to apply Regulatory Impact Analysis to communications policy issues. None of this will be easy and, as with any reorganization, there will undoubtedly be hiccups along the way. But this promises to be one of the most important parts of Chairman Pai’s legacy.
Thomas Lenard is Senior Fellow and President Emeritus at the Technology Policy Institute. Lenard is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles on telecommunications, electricity, antitrust, privacy, e-commerce and other regulatory issues. His publications include Net Neutrality or Net Neutering: Should Broadband Internet Services Be Regulated?; The Digital Economy Fact Book; Privacy and the Commercial Use of Personal Information; Competition, Innovation and the Microsoft Monopoly: Antitrust in the Digital Marketplace; and Deregulating Electricity: The Federal Role.
Before joining the Technology Policy Institute, Lenard was acting president, senior vice president for research and senior fellow at The Progress & Freedom Foundation. He has served in senior economics positions at the Office of Management and Budget, the Federal Trade Commission and the Council on Wage and Price Stability, and was a member of the economics faculty at the University of California, Davis. He is a past president and chairman of the board of the National Economists Club.
Lenard is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and holds a PhD in economics from Brown University. He can be reached at [email protected]
