Since 2006, the Information Economy Project has brought together thought leaders in telecommunications to discuss important issues facing regulators and industry stakeholders. Conference papers, audio recordings, powerpoint presentation slides, and speaker biographies are available below.

Recent Conference:

Date: Friday, October 2, 2009

This conference will explore a paradox that broadly affects the Information Economy. Property rights are essential to avoid a tragedy of the commons; defined properly, such institutions yield productive incentives for creation, conservation, discovery and cooperation.  Applied improperly, however, such rights can produce confusion, wasteful rent-seeking, and a tragedy of the anti-commons.  This conference, building on Columbia University law professor Michael Heller’s book, The Gridlock Economy, tackles these themes through the lens of three distinct subjects: “patent thickets,” reallocation of the TV band, and the Google Books copyright litigation.

Please visit the Gridlock Economy Page for the conference schedule and a full list of panelists.

Past Conferences:

The Genesis of Unlicensed Wireless: How Spread Spectrum Devices Won Access to License-Exempt Bandwidth

Conference • April 4, 2008, George Mason University School of Law

>> Papers & Presentations

>> Conference papers will be published in a special issue of INFO (forthcoming).

>> Full agenda from the event

>> More details

The technologies used in Wi-Fi and cordless phones were not authorized for use until a bold and unlikely initiative was undertaken by the Federal Communications Commission, from 1979 to 1985. This IEP conference brought together the engineers, entrepreneurs and FCC officials who changed the rules and unleashed unlicensed wireless.

Merger Analysis In High Technology Markets

Conference • February 1, 2008, George Mason University School of Law

>> Papers

>> Audio from the event (iTunes)

>> Conference papers will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Competition Law & Economics.

>> Full agenda from the event

>> More details

The IEP conference on high tech mergers focused on how to evaluate antitrust issues in dynamic markets, where product boundaries and competitive rivalries are characterized more by tumult than by stability. Plenary speakers presented a rich array of analysis of Information Economy mergers, including DirecTV-Dish, Google-DoubleClick, and XM-Sirius.

Smart Radio: Smart Markets and Policies

Conference • April 6, 2007, Westin Hotel, 801 N. Glebe Road, Arlington, VA 22203

>> CITI Smart Radio event website

>> Presentations

>> Full agenda from the event

>> More details

"Smart radio" (cognitive, adaptive, and software defined radio) offers the promise of greatly alleviating spectrum scarcity and increasing the diversity of users and applications. Radios that can locate unused spectrum should significantly reduce congestion, and encourage competitive, commercial and community entry. Such technologies will have significant impacts on existing stakeholders, on market structures and on network performance.

This conference is intended to establish a dialog between the electrical engineering community developing these new technologies and those involved in developing economic models and regulatory policies needed to facilitate the introduction of the new technologies.

The Crisis in Public Safety Communications: Perspectives from the Academic, Business, and Policymaking Communities

Conference • December 6, 2006, George Mason University School of Law

>> Research published by the Federal Communications Law Journal (June 2007)

>> Full agenda from the event

>> More details

When terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, more than 100 fighters could not receive the call ordering evacuation on police radios. This was precisely the catastrophe warned of five years earlier in a federal report on interoperability problems.

The Crisis in Public Safety Communications Conference brought together prominent scholars, policymakers, and industry officials to discuss solutions to this deadly serious problem. Major telecommunications scholars presented groundbreaking research on what causes the lack of effective communication between local public safety personnel, and how U.S. spectrum policies have failed to remedy this Balkanization problem. This research was then discussed by two panels of industry executives, public safety officials, and policymakers with deep knowledge of the problems confronting us.