Profile Information

Profile

Thomas Hazlett holds the H.H. Macaulay Endowed Chair in Economics at Clemson, conducting research in the field of Law and Economics and specializing in the Information Economy, including the analysis of markets and regulation in telecommunications, media, and the Internet. Prof. Hazlett served as Chief Economist of the Federal Communications Commission, and has held faculty positions at the University of California, Davis, Columbia University, the Wharton School, and George Mason University School of Law. His research has appeared in such academic publications as the Journal of Law & Economics, the Journal of Legal Studies, the Journal of Financial Economics and the Rand Journal of Economics, and he has published articles in the Univ. of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Yale Journal on Regulation, the Columbia Law Review, and the Berkeley Technology Law Journal. He also writes for popular periodicals including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Reason, The New Republic, The Economist, Slate, and the Financial Times, where he was a columnist on technology policy issues, 2002-2011. Prof. Hazlett also serves as Director of the Information Economy Project at Clemson University. He has provided expert testimony to federal and state courts, regulatory agencies, committees of Congress, foreign governments, and international organizations. His latest book, THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM: The Tumultuous Liberation of Wireless Technology, from Herbert Hoover to the Smartphone, was published by Yale University Press in 2017.

Research Interests

• Law and Economics, Internet and Media economics, Radio Spectrum allocation

Research Publications

• "Optimal Abolition of FCC Allocation of Radio Spectrum," 22 Journal of Economic Perspectives (Winter 2008), 103-28.
• "A Law and Economics Approach to Spectrum Property Rights: A Response to Professors Weiser & Hatfield," 15 George Mason University Law Review, No. 3 (June 2008), 975-1023.
• "A Rejoinder to Weiser and Hatfield on Spectrum Rights," 15 George Mason Law Review (June 2008), 1031-39.
• "Some Dynamics of Merger Analysis in General and With Respect to XM-Sirius," Journal of Competition Law & Economics (2008), 1-21.
• "Property Rights and the Value of Wireless Licenses," 51 Journal of Law & Economics (Aug. 2008), 563-97.
• "Natural Experiments in Broadband Regulation," with Anil Caliskan, 7 Review of Network Economics (Dec. 2008), 460-80.
• "Spectrum Allocation in Latin America: An Economic Analysis," with Roberto Munoz, 21 Information Economics & Policy (June 2009), 261-78.
• "A Welfare Analysis of Spectrum Allocation Policies," with Roberto E. Munoz, 40 RAND Journal on Economics (Autumn 2009), 424-54.
• "The Overly Active Corpse of Red Lion," with Sarah Oh & Drew Clark, Northwestern Journal of Technology & Intellectual Property (Fall 2010), 51-95.
• "Policy-Induced Competition: The Case of Cable TV Set-Top Boxes," with Ralitza Grigorova, 12 Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology (Winter 2011), 279-311.
• "Tragedy T.V.: Rights Fragmentation and the Junk Band Problem," 53 Arizona Law Review (Spring 2011), 83-130.
• "Market Power in U.S. Broadband Services," with Dennis Weisman, Review of Industrial Organization (March 2011), 151-71.
• "Modularity in Mobile Networks: Is the iPhone iPhony?" 19 Supreme Court Economic Review (2011), 67-102.
• "The Case for Liberal Spectrum Licenses: A Technical and Economic Analysis," with Evan Leo, 26 Berkeley Technology Law Journal (Spring 2011), 1037-1101.
• "What Really Matters in Spectrum Allocation Design," with Roberto Munoz & Diego Avanzini, 10 Northwestern Journal of Technology & Intellectual Property 93 (2012), 93-123.
• "Radio Spectrum and the Disruptive Clarity of Ronald Coase," with David Porter and Vernon Smith, 54 Journal of Law & Economics (Nov. 2011), S125-65.
• "The Law and Economics of Network Neutrality," with Joshua D. Wright, 45 Indiana Law Review (2012), 767-840.
• "Exactitude v. Economics: Radio Spectrum and the 'Harmful Interference' Conundrum," with Sarah Oh, 26 Berkeley Technology Law Journal (Spring 2013), 227-339.
• "Tragedy of the Regulatory Commons: LightSquared and the Missing Spectrum Rights," with Brent Skorup, 13 Duke Law & Technology Review (2014), 1-35.
• "The Rationality of U.S. Regulation of the Broadcast Spectrum in the 1934 Communications Act," 45 Review of Industrial Organization (Nov. 2014), 203-220.
• "Coase and Demsetz on Property Rights: the Case of Radio Spectrum," in Claude Manard & Elodie Bertrand, eds., Ronald H. Coase (Edward Elgar Publishing; 2015), 235-48.
• "Understanding the Disruptive Innovation Wrought by Computers and the Internet: A Review," 23 International Journal of the Economics of Business (Sept. 2016), 391-408.
• "Valuing Spectrum Allocations," with Michael Honig, 23 Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review (Fall 2016), 45-111.
• “Valuing Spectrum Allocations,” with Michael Honig, 23 Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review (Fall 2016), 45-111.
• “The Effect of Regulation on Broadband Markets: Evaluating the Empirical Evidence in the FCC’s 2015 ‘Open Internet’ Order,” with Joshua D. Wright, Review of Industrial Organization (June 2017), 487-507.
• “Armen Alchian: Seeing markets,” 44 Journal of Corporate Finance (2017), 565-69.
• “Mobile Phone Regulation: The Effect of Prohibiting Handset Bundling in Finland,” with Sarah Oh & Brent Skorup, 14 Journal of Competition Law & Economics (March 2018), 65–90.
• “The Educational Impact of Broadband Subsidies for Schools Under E-Rate,” with Ben Schwall and Scott Wallsten, 28 Economics of Innovation and New Technology (2019), 483-97.
• “Introduction: The Radio Act of 1927 Turns 90,” 56 Review of Industrial Organization (Feb. 2020), 1-4.
• “The ‘Nirvana Fallacy’ in Hipster Antitrust,” Working Paper (Jan. 31, 2020).
• “The 1927 Radio Act As Pre-Emption of Common Law Property Rights,” 56 Review of Industrial Organization (Feb. 2020), 17-35.
• “U.S. Antitrust Policy in the Age of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Netflix and Facebook,” paper for the U.S. House of Representatives, Judiciary Committee, Bipartisan Investigation into Competition in Digital Markets (April 17, 2020).

Links

• Information Economy Project @ Clemson
• The Political Spectrum: The Tumultuous Liberation of Wireless Technologies, from Herbert Hoover to the Smartphone