Auctioning the Airwaves: The Contest for Broadband pcs Spectrum (original) (raw)

1995, Journal of Economics <html_ent glyph="@amp;" ascii="&"/> Management Strategy

The House and Senate of the United States Congress recently passed legislation that directs the FCC to establish a system for using auctions to allocate the use of radio spectrum for personal communications services. There is a unique and unprecedented set of issues that arise in this context, which are of interest to economists, industry analysts, regulators, and policymakers. W e discuss these issues and evaluate their likely impact on the outcome of the spectrum auctions. In addition, we argue that there may be pitfalls in the auction procedure adopted by the FCC, and we discuss possible alternative procedures. We wish to thank Dillip Abreu, Barry Nalebuff, Charlie Plott, David Porter, and David Salant for helpful discussions, and two referees for their comments. Any remaining errors however, are ours alone. 1. The amendment was enacted on August 10,1993, as part of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, which added a new section 309(j) to the Communication Act of 1934 (as amended, 47 U.S.C. Tl151-713, Communication Act).