Will Chairman Pai resurrect economics at the Federal Communications Commission?

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai recently announced that he is forming the Office of Economics and Data (OED) at the FCC. This is a good first step. But what we need is a change that makes it nearly impossible for the agency to return to the situation of the past few years, where letters from senators and videos from the White House were the primary sources of economic analysis. This will require a deeper structural change.

To accomplish this, the commission will need to abolish its industry silos — the wireline, wireless and media bureaus — so that turf wars cannot crowd out economic work. It would also be valuable to establish a research fund so that young economists and engineers are excited to begin their careers at the agency and hopefully spend significant time there, perhaps their entire careers. Chairman Pai’s initiative and the deeper changes I identified are not permanent cures for the problems that plague the agency — bad leadership can destroy even the best organizations — but perhaps we can get the FCC back to being a world leader in rigorous thought. Pai has given the agency a start.

[Mark Jamison is the director and Gunter Professor of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida]