Resumen de The 80th anniversary of the 1934 communications act and the inception of the federal communications commission

Michelle Connolly

• For the 80th anniversary of the 1934 Communications Act and the creation of the modern Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Lawrence White and I invited experts in the field of telecommunications to reflect upon aspects of the 1934 Act and the FCC of their choosing for this special edition of the Review of Industrial Organization. We are pleased to have received five excellent articles that cover a range of topics from the decision to pass the 1934 Communications Act, historic spectrum allocation and reallocation, competitive aspects of spectrum transactions, regulation and competition in the broadcast industry, and finally the role of the FCC in merger reviews.

  Thomas Hazlett considers the origins of the 1934 Communications Act and evaluates three competing theories about the motivation of lawmakers for passing what appeared essentially to re-enact the 1927 Radio Act. Hazlett challenges Coase�s (1959) �error� theory and the �public interest� hypothesis by Moss and Fein (2003), both ...