First Principles for an Effective Rewrite of the Telecommunications Act of 1996

The increasing centrality of the Internet in modern communications, together with massive changes in the landscape of the telecommunications market, have intensified the calls for Congress to overhaul the Telecommunications Act of 1996. In this paper, we analyze this looming legislative challenge by dividing it into two sets of issues: first, issues concerning the proper substance of telecommunications policy reform; and, second, issues concerning the appropriate institutions for carrying out that reform. In Part I, we argue that Congress should require regulators to adhere more closely to (and justify departures from) basic antitrust principles in developing the substance of competition policy. In particular, we explore how those principles would have brought greater predictability and analytical rigor to the FCC's implementation of statutory provisions requiring incumbent telephone providers to lease parts of their networks to competitors. Moreover, we explain how antitrust principles can now inform the current debate over whether to regulate broadband platforms to prevent discrimination against independent providers of applications like voice over Internet protocol. In Part II, we turn to Congress's institutional choices in reforming telecommunications regulation.Despite our advocacy for antitrust-oriented rules of decision, we argue for a continued reliance on the FCC, rather than antitrust courts, as the appropriate institution for superintending the efficient development of competition throughout the industry.Not only does the FCC enjoy specialized expertise in the economics and technology of the telecommunications industry, it also enjoys a distinct advantage over courts in developing and enforcing complicated ,and necessary,prescriptive rules, such as those governing interconnection and its associated intercarrier fees. At the same time, the FCC will increasingly need to refocus its energies from prescriptive regulation to a new emphasis on after-the-fact enforcement and market-monitoring, much like the role played today by the Federal Trade Commission.

Antitrust Oversight of an Antitrust Dispute: An Institutional Perspective on the Net Neutrality Debate

The term "net neutrality" describes various proposals for regulatory intervention in the Internet marketplace. For example, under one type of proposal embodied in pending legislation, regulators would ban a broadband Internet access provider (such as Comcast or Verizon) from reaching commercial agreements with particular applications and content providers to provide the sophisticated quality-of-service techniques needed to support unusually performance-sensitive applications and content, such as real-time video streaming or multiplayer online videogames. Such proposals will likely be, one way or the other, a principal focus of telecommunications policy for the next decade.They have captured the attention of Congress, where several bills on the topic have been introduced; of legal, economic, and technology scholars across the ideological spectrum; and, of principal interest here, two key federal agencies: the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. Most discussions of net neutrality focus on the merits of the debate: on the substantive costs and benefits of government intervention in the broadband market. This paper focuses instead on the comparatively neglected institutional dimension of the debate: an inquiry into which federal agencies are best positioned to resolve net neutrality disputes when they arise. As the paper argues, the net neutrality controversy is best understood as a classic antitrust dispute about "vertical leveraging," and the institutions most likely to appreciate the economic complexities of that dispute are the nation's specialized antitrust agencies: the Justice Department and the FTC. Because these agencies regulate the economy at large rather than a single industry, they are less vulnerable than the FCC to capture by industry factions; they are less likely to develop industry-specific bureaucracies with incentives to keep themselves relevant through over-regulation; and, because of their firm grounding in antitrust enforcement, they are more likely to resolve competition-oriented disputes dispassionately and on their economic merits.The paper thus argues for reviving in this context the competition-policy model that prevailed for much of the final quarter of the last century: a regime in which antitrust authorities, rather than industry-specific regulators, take the lead in addressing vertical-leveraging claims against providers of telecommunications transmission platforms.

A Market-Oriented Analysis of the \u27Terminating Access Monopoly\u27 Concept

Policymakers have long invoked the concept of a “terminating access monopoly” to inform communications policy. Roughly speaking, the concept holds that a consumer-facing network provider, no matter how small or how subject to retail competition, generally possesses monopoly power vis-à-vis third-party senders of communications traffic to its customers. Regulators and advocates have routinely cited that concern to justify regulatory intervention in a variety of contexts where the regulated party may or may not have possessed market power in any relevant retail market. Despite the centrality of the terminating access monopoly to modern communications policy, there is surprisingly little academic literature on that concept as it applies to current regulatory debates. This paper seeks to fill that gap by exploring the various settings in which the concept does, or does not, help explain market dynamics in the communications sector. We conclude that the terminating access monopoly phenomenon, strictly understood, does not itself generally threaten market failures except in very limited circumstances. As the paper explains, the phenomenon could threaten inefficient outcomes only where, because of the underlying market context, the interconnecting provider or its customer has a particularized need to reach the customer set of the terminating access provider, and even then, market forces might correct any problem without regulatory intervention

A Market-Oriented Analysis of the \u27Terminating Access Monopoly\u27 Concept

Policymakers have long invoked the concept of a “terminating access monopoly” to inform communications policy. Roughly speaking, the concept holds that a consumer-facing network provider, no matter how small or how subject to retail competition, generally possesses monopoly power vis-à-vis third-party senders of communications traffic to its customers. Regulators and advocates have routinely cited that concern to justify regulatory intervention in a variety of contexts where the regulated party may or may not have possessed market power in any relevant retail market. Despite the centrality of the terminating access monopoly to modern communications policy, there is surprisingly little academic literature on that concept as it applies to current regulatory debates. This paper seeks to fill that gap by exploring the various settings in which the concept does, or does not, help explain market dynamics in the communications sector. We conclude that the terminating access monopoly phenomenon, strictly understood, does not itself generally threaten market failures except in very limited circumstances. As the paper explains, the phenomenon could threaten inefficient outcomes only where, because of the underlying market context, the interconnecting provider or its customer has a particularized need to reach the customer set of the terminating access provider, and even then, market forces might correct any problem without regulatory intervention

Mapping genomic loci implicates genes and synaptic biology in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia has a heritability of 60-80%1, much of which is attributable to common risk alleles. Here, in a two-stage genome-wide association study of up to 76,755 individuals with schizophrenia and 243,649 control individuals, we report common variant associations at 287 distinct genomic loci. Associations were concentrated in genes that are expressed in excitatory and inhibitory neurons of the central nervous system, but not in other tissues or cell types. Using fine-mapping and functional genomic data, we identify 120 genes (106 protein-coding) that are likely to underpin associations at some of these loci, including 16 genes with credible causal non-synonymous or untranslated region variation. We also implicate fundamental processes related to neuronal function, including synaptic organization, differentiation and transmission. Fine-mapped candidates were enriched for genes associated with rare disruptive coding variants in people with schizophrenia, including the glutamate receptor subunit GRIN2A and transcription factor SP4, and were also enriched for genes implicated by such variants in neurodevelopmental disorders. We identify biological processes relevant to schizophrenia pathophysiology; show convergence of common and rare variant associations in schizophrenia and neurodevelopmental disorders; and provide a resource of prioritized genes and variants to advance mechanistic studies

Chicago and Its Discontents

This symposium began with a call for papers “reassessing the validity of the Chicago School’s assumptions about competition and considering whether a more aggressive approach to antitrust enforcement is now warranted.” That framing uncritically accepts the premises of antitrust’s new populist movement: first, that “the Chicago School” marked an abrupt break from prior academic analysis of antitrust law, and second, that its adherents shared a common positive agenda fundamentally at odds with robust antitrust enforcement. Both of those premises are false. The Chicago School represented a logical continuation of the antitrust analysis developed over the preceding decades, and its members shared no positive doctrinal agenda. Instead, they shared a commitment only to promoting consumer interests by means of rigorous economics. Of course, that commitment influenced how the economics profession and antitrust policymakers thought, and progressive “postChicago” scholarship today shares the same commitment to consumer welfare and economic rigor. Such scholarship thus has far more in common with Chicago School scholarship of the 1960s and 1970s than wi

Chicago and Its Discontents

This symposium began with a call for papers “reassessing the validity of the Chicago School’s assumptions about competition and considering whether a more aggressive approach to antitrust enforcement is now warranted.” That framing uncritically accepts the premises of antitrust’s new populist movement: first, that “the Chicago School” marked an abrupt break from prior academic analysis of antitrust law, and second, that its adherents shared a common positive agenda fundamentally at odds with robust antitrust enforcement. Both of those premises are false. The Chicago School represented a logical continuation of the antitrust analysis developed over the preceding decades, and its members shared no positive doctrinal agenda. Instead, they shared a commitment only to promoting consumer interests by means of rigorous economics. Of course, that commitment influenced how the economics profession and antitrust policymakers thought, and progressive “postChicago” scholarship today shares the same commitment to consumer welfare and economic rigor. Such scholarship thus has far more in common with Chicago School scholarship of the 1960s and 1970s than wi

Identifying cognitive mechanisms targeted for treatment development in schizophrenia:an overview of the first meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia Initiative

This overview describes the generation and development of the ideas that led to the Cognitive Neuroscience Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia (CNTRICS) initiative. It also describes the organization, process and products of the first meeting. The CNTRICS initiative involves a series of three conferences that will systematically address barriers to translating paradigms developed in the basic animal and human cognitive neuroscience fields for use in translational research aimed at developing novel treatments for cognitive impairments in schizophrenia. The articles in this special section report on the results of the first conference, which used a criterion based consensus-building process to develop a set of cognitive constructs to be targeted for translation efforts

Selecting Paradigms From Cognitive Neuroscience for Translation into Use in Clinical Trials: Proceedings of the Third CNTRICS Meeting

This overview describes the goals and objectives of the third conference conducted as part of the Cognitive Neuroscience Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia (CNTRICS) initiative. This third conference was focused on selecting specific paradigms from cognitive neuroscience that measured the constructs identified in the first CNTRICS meeting, with the goal of facilitating the translation of these paradigms into use in clinical trials contexts. To identify such paradigms, we had an open nomination process in which the field was asked to nominate potentially relevant paradigms and to provide information on several domains relevant to selecting the most promising tasks for each construct (eg, construct validity, neural bases, psychometrics, availability of animal models). Our goal was to identify 1–2 promising tasks for each of the 11 constructs identified at the first CNTRICS meeting. In this overview article, we describe the on-line survey used to generate nominations for promising tasks, the criteria that were used to select the tasks, the rationale behind the criteria, and the ways in which breakout groups worked together to identify the most promising tasks from among those nominated. This article serves as an introduction to the set of 6 articles included in this special issue that provide information about the specific tasks discussed and selected for the constructs from each of 6 broad domains (working memory, executive control, attention, long-term memory, perception, and social cognition)