Gerry Faulhaber's Research Page

My Research interests are eclectic, to say the least. My most recent work is on the political economy of regulation and the Internet and Public Policy, but I've also included earlier papers on banking and telecommunications. Feel free to browse, download, whatever…

The papers can be downloaded in Acrobat PDF format; the Acrobat Reader is available for free. Check out the Abstract before you commit to a download. If you are sure you want to view the whole paper, click on the Icon or Paper Title.

Spectrum Management: Property Rights, Markets, and the Commons (89Kb) (with Dave Farber)

Forthcoming, Telecommunications Policy Research Conference Proceedings, 2003 This is our contribution to the policy debate regarding appropriate mechanisms for allocating radio spectrum. It has attracted quite a bit of attention and controversy; I presented this work at several fora of the FCC's Spectrum Policy Task Force in 2002.

Bottlenecks and Bandwagons: Access Policy in the New Telecommunicatons (84Kb)

Forthcoming, Handbook of Telecommunications Economics, Vogelsang and Cave, eds., 2004. A more thorough reprise on access issues, particularly as they apply to telecommunications. This is likely my final word on the subject...maybe.

Access ¹ Access1 + Access2 (89Kb)

Published in The Law Review of Michigan State University - Detroit College of Law, 677, 2002. A piece I did for the Quello Center at Michigan State on access issues. My point here is that there are two kinds of access, which are very different and need to be handled differently by regulators and antitrust enforcers.

Access and Network Effects in a "New Economy Merger: AOL-Time Warner (84Kb)

Forthcoming, The Antitrust Revolution, Kwoka and White, eds., 2003. Here's where I do a full review of the case, including both the FCC and the FTC, with a critical comparison of both.

Network Effects and Merger Analysis: Instant Messaging and the AOL-Time Warner Case (161 Kb)

Published in Telecommunications Policy, Jun/Jul 2002, 26, 311-333 The merger of AOL and Time Warner, announced in January 2000, is the largest merger ever consummated in corporate history. The merger case was considered by both the FTC and the FCC, the latter while I was Chief Economist. I was the architect of the economic case for placing restrictions on the merger relating to Instant Messaging. This paper analyzes the case and presents the arguments for and against an Instant Messaging condition. It also includes an economic model of network effects in a growing market, and carefully defines what tipping means and how one tests for it.

Policy-Induced Competition: The Telecommunications Experiments (221 Kb)

Forthcoming, Information Economics and Policy, 2003 The 1996 Telecoms Act mandated the Regional Bell Operating Companies "unbundle" their local loop (the last natural monopoly/essential facility) in order to accelerate local competition in telephony. The experiment has so far not been a rousing success. I look at the three previous occasions in which policymakers attempted to open part of the telecoms market to competition, with mixed success. I hypothesize, based on this record, conditions necessary to achieve competition; I test this hypothesis using a natural experiment involving intrastate intra-LATA toll calling vs. inter-LATA toll calling. Guess what? This latest attempt is going to fail.

Broadband Deployment: Is Policy in the Way? (64 Kb)

Forthcoming, Brookings Conference Proceedings, 2003 After years of delay, broadband services that connect homes to the Internet are finally rolling out. However, some has called the pace of this rollout "disappointing". The Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs), who are deploying DSL, a broadband technology, have claimed that FCC regulations are a cause of this slow deployment, arguing that these regulations reduce their broadband investments incentive. In this paper, I examine the pace of the broadband rollout relative to the historical deployment pace of other popular electronic products and services; I find that broadband is being deployed at least as fast as recently introduced products and services. I also examine the hypothesis that government regulation has impeded broadband deployment. I find there is no empirical evidence to support this hypothesis and a number of factors that suggest otherwise. Finally, I make recommendations of actions regulators and legislators could take that are likely to have a significant impact on the pace of broadband deployment.

Information, Disinformation and Lobbying in a Median Voter Model (137 Kb)