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Humanities Department Faculty Publications & Research
Internationalization of Infrastructures: Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Conference on the Economics of Infrastructures
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The Public Interest, Spectrum Markets And The American Experience With Radio Regulation: Historical And Comparative Lessons For The European Union, Michael R. Fein Ph.D.
The Public Interest, Spectrum Markets And The American Experience With Radio Regulation: Historical And Comparative Lessons For The European Union, Michael R. Fein Ph.D.
Humanities Department Faculty Publications & Research
This chapter reflects on radio spectrum management in the United States, with the aim of identifying useful historical and comparative lessons for European Union policy makers as they contemplate the adoption of pan-European market mechanisms to allocate radio frequencies. It explores the history of American radio regulation and the impact of conflicting interpretations of that history on contemporary policy debates surrounding the liberalization of spectrum markets. The public interest theory of policy making has long been critiqued as inappropriate to spectrum management by economists following the lead of Ronald Coase. But the American experience with radio regulation suggests that economic …