Boliek Right Choice as FCC Chief Economist, AEI's Eisenach Says, Citing New Econ Office
Babette Boliek is a good choice as FCC chief economist, to oversee opening the Office of Economics and Analytics, said Jeffrey Eisenach, visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a job Boliek has also held. Eisenach noted some fear the…
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new office will take the economists out of bureaus where they are “embedded” with the lawyers who “really” run the FCC. “While the ‘Siberia effect’ is a valid concern in theory, the FCC Order establishing the new office makes it unlikely by giving it real bureaucratic ‘throw weight,’ including specific responsibility for overseeing spectrum auctions and a requirement that the office review every rulemaking before it is released to the public and conduct a formal benefit-cost analysis of all major rules,” Eisenach blogged. It “has a fighting chance to ensure that future FCC decisions are made through multidisciplinary collaboration in which economic analysis plays a significant role,” he wrote. “That has often been the case at the Federal Trade Commission, whose Bureau of Economics dates to 1915.”