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Like the Economic Seminars
program, the Economic Lectures program is managed by OSP. It
is intended to advance recent economic analyses in the fields
of industrial organization, regulation, and applied microeconomics.
The Commission recognizes the importance of expanding its engagement
with the research community because staff members often must address
difficult issues requiring substantive expertise. Invited speakers
primarily are economists but they also include other professionals
with expertise on communications issues of interest to FCC economists.
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| Joseph
Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate |
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In this 92 minute
lecture, Dr. Stiglitz discusses how selective government
intervention by the FCC and Department of Justice
can improve performance where the lack of information
prevents telecom markets from working efficiently.
Toward that end, he addresses several important
topics. One is how the existence of even small
sunk costs may serve as a barrier to entry in communications
markets.
A second is how, due to network externalities,
telecom networks are particularly prone to non-competitive
behavior, which he says is illustrated by the break
up of AT&T several decades ago. A third topic
is the role of liberalized regulation
of telecom markets as a contributor to the telecom
bubble occurring in the 1990s.
A fourth topic is the importance of devoting some
public spectrum to free broadcast time for political
candidates seeking public office to reduce their
reliance on political contributions. He argues
that media diversity is important to the quality
of public services and that communication is essential
to the quality of our political system.
Dr. Stiglitz
was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001
for helping to pioneer a new branch of economics,
the economics of information. He is a professor
of finance and business at Columbia University.
He holds a PhD in economics from MIT. This
lecture is a part of the Chief Economist’s
Distinguished Speaker Series at the FCC. |
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| Barry
Nalebuff, Yale Univ. |
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In this 87
minute lecture, Professor Nalebuff explains that,
when a company that has market power in two goods,
it can bundle them together to make it harder for
a rival with only one of these goods to enter the
market. This is because the incumbent can defend both
products without having to price low in each. He explains
how a firm can use bundling to preserve and amplify
its market power.
The economist's traditional explanation
for bundling is that it is an effective tool for price
discrimination. Nalebuff's contribution to this theory
is his recognition that, while price discrimination
does provide a reason to bundle, the gains are small
compared to those from the entry-deterrent effect.
Professor
Nalebuff is Milton Steinbach Professor of Management
at Yale School of Management. He holds a Mphil and
PhD in economics from Oxford University. |
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| Paul
Milgrom, Stanford Univ. |
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In this
88 minute lecture, Professor Milgrom looks at several
recent successful auction designs. These include
the FCC simultaneous multiple-round auction which
allocates spectrum, the National Resident Matching
Program which matches doctors to hospital residency
programs, and the EDF auction of power generation
capacity. He also discusses recent academic research
in market design, including empirical, theoretical,
and experimental work.
Moreover, Professor Milgrom
also discusses a number of important insights arising
out of that academic work. These include, for example,
information on why muti-round auctions may be needed
to find stable allocations, how product complementarity
can lead to seller market power in exchanges, and
why proxy bidding can eliminate collusion and speed
the market-clearing process.
Professor Milgrom
holds an MS in statistics and PhD in business from
Stanford University, where he now teaches in the
Department of Economics. This
lecture is a part of the Chief Economist’s Distinguished
Speaker Series at the FCC. |
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| Douglas
North, Nobel Laureate |
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In this 70
minute lecture, Dr. North talks about institutions
and economic development. He focuses on two issues.
One is what prevents economies
from working well and
the other is what can we do about
it. He begins with
Neoclassical economics, observiing that its objective
was to explain efficient resource allocation, not
to deal with the issues of economic development.
Dr. North
argues that trying to apply Neoclassical theory
to development issues is problematical: first, it
mistakenly assumes the economy is frictionless and,
second, it incorrectly assumes the economy is timeless
(i.e., static rather than dynamic). He then
talks about how government should deal with those
two problems.
What is needed, he says, is to know enough
about the background and cultural heritage of a society
so you have some feeling for the interplay between
the formal rules and the informal norms and the way
they work.
That is, we must understand the country’s
institutions which are the incentive systems that
structure human interaction and reduce uncertainty.
What is also needed, he explains, is to have a sense
of the margins where changes will be effective and
what the implications of those changes will be.
Dr.
North received the Nobel Prize in 1993 for his research
on the economic history of the U.S. and Europe, as
well as for his contributions to understanding how
economic and political institutions change over time.
He is a professor in the Department of Economics at
Washington University in St. Louis and holds a PhD
from the University of California, Berkeley. This
lecture is the first in the Chief Economist’s
Distinguished Speaker Series at the FCC. |
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| Other
Local Economic Lectures and Seminars |
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