Changes in U.S. telecommunications policy over the past two decades, culminating in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, have come to be regarded as the triumph of economic reason over regulatory chaos, whim, and incoherence. Public choice theory, however, suggests that telecommunications policy has been guided not by economic reason but by the self-interest of government decision-makers.

James A. Montanye is a retired consulting economist in Falls Church, Virginia.
Antitrust, Competition, and MonopolyBureaucracy and GovernmentEconomyFree Market EconomicsGovernment and PoliticsIntellectual PropertyLaw and LibertyPublic ChoiceRegulationScience and Public Policy
Other Independent Review articles by James A. Montanye
Summer 2018 Digital Revolutions in Public Finance
Winter 2015/16 Does Altruism Exist?: Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others
Fall 2014 The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left
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