Redesigning Spectrum Licenses to Encourage Innovation and Investment

Paul Milgrom, E. Glen Weyl and Anthony Lee Zhang
Additional contact information
E. Glen Weyl: Microsoft Research
Anthony Lee Zhang: Stanford University

Research Papers from Stanford University, Graduate School of Business

Abstract: Commercial radio spectrum use rights in the US are traditionally assigned using licenses over large geographic areas with 10- or 15-year terms, to encourage infrastructure investment. However, such long-term licenses are difficult to reassign as more valuable uses for spectrum arise. Licenses with shorter term limits over smaller areas expedite reassignment of spectrum to innovative entrants, but provide lower incentives for long-term investment. Recent economic theory suggests that this trade-off between protecting long-term investments and enabling valuable, innovative entry can be muted by a new, more efficient "depreciating" license. A promising application is to priority access in the 3.5GHz band, where thousands of licenses are about to be auctioned. Alternatively, carefully redesigning auction rules may offer similar benefits.

Date: 2017-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-des
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/gsb-cmis/gsb-cmis-download-auth/441921
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecl:stabus:repec:ecl:stabus:3587

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Papers from Stanford University, Graduate School of Business Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().