We economists are the Rodney Dangerfields of the nation’s capital: even in a city filled with lawyers and Congressmen, we still can’t get any respect. But that could be changing—at the FCC, at least.
Last week, at an event sponsored by the Hudson Institute, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced that he was creating a new Office of Economics and Data (OED) within the Commission. Pai envisions the OED combining economists and other data professionals currently scattered throughout the Commission into a central location, where their work could be leveraged by the various FCC bureaus.
In his remarks, Pai outlined the problems with the status quo: economists are not systematically incorporated into policy work at the FCC; they tend to work in silos that impede their productivity and impair agency efficiency; cost-benefit analysis at the Commission tends to be ignored; and data collection efforts tend to be ineffective and overly burdensome.