The opinions expressed in these papers and articles reflect the views and the work of the authors rather than the views of the institution. Navigant Economics takes pride in the independence of its Experts and thus their views, their research on behalf of Clients, and their final analyses which support their expert opinions.

January 26, 2012
The Milken Institute Review published a book review by Navigant Economics Managing Director Hal Singer on Tim Wu's Master Switch. In his review, Dr. Singer analyzes Mr. Wu's assessment of vertical integration in media industries, and he critiques Mr. Wu's prescription of a "separations principle" that would separate the ownership of content and distribution. Dr. Singer draws on his experience in program-carriage disputes in the cable television industry to suggest an alternative approach to regulating discrimination on the Internet.

December 21, 2011
Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Richard Sippel relied extensively on the testimony of Dr. Hal Singer in deciding whether Comcast discriminated against Tennis Channel on the basis of affiliation. Judge Sippel determined that Dr. Singer “testified persuasively” on the proper measures of a network’s value. The ruling marked the first time that the FCC’s ALJ has found that a cable operator violated the program carriage anti-discrimination rules, which were established in 1993. The decision and its likely impact on future carriage disputes has been reported in several major newspapers, including the New York Times and the LA Times.

December 5, 2011
Navigant Economics Managing Director, James Langenfeld along with Navigant Economics Director, Stephan Levy recently contributed a chapter, The Handbook of Competition Economics to The Handbook of Competition of Economics 2012 – a Global Competition Review special report – www.globalcompetitionreview.com. This specific chapter of the report provides an overview of happenings in competition law and economics in the United States, discussing the new Horizontal Merger Guidelines, monopolization cases, merger enforcement, and new policy initiatives such as the DOJ's updated Policy Guide to Merger Remedies.

October 27, 2011
Navigant Economics releases its Q4 ‘Antitrust Litigation Report’. The report highlights recent antitrust litigation activity, spotlights notable cases, and identifies trends and other major changes taking place in the antitrust litigation arena.

October 19, 2011
Navigant Economics Managing Director, Cathy Niden will participate in a panel at the Thomson Reuters 24th Annual ERISA Litigation Conference taking place from 1:45p.m. to 2:45p.m. on Wednesday, November 9th, 2011 at Thomson Hall in New York City. Also featured on the panel are, Paul J. Ondrasik, Jr. (Steptoe & Johnson), Howard Shapiro (Proskauer Rose LLP), Lynn L. Sarko (Keller Rohrback Law Offices) and Lawrence Fine (Chartis Insurance). Specifically, this panel will discuss ERISA employer stock cases, including the implications of recent decisions handed down by the 2nd Circuit on October 19, 2011 in the Citigroup and McGraw-Hill ERISA litigations. The conference will be held from 9:00a.m. to 5:00p.m. and will feature leading ERISA counsel from the defense and plaintiffs’ bar. Timothy Hauser, Associate Solicitor, U.S. Department of Labor, will give the Keynote Address

October 4, 2011
Navigant Economics Associate Director, John Hore and William J. Carrington of the Congressional Budget Office have recently published an article in The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy. The article, entitled “Labor Market Effects of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill,” discusses the labor market effects of the 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska, which was the largest U.S. oceanic oil spill prior to the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill. They find that employment and average earnings increased when the cleanup effort was largest and that there appears to have been little adverse effect on average labor market opportunities in later years.

September 20, 2011
Howard Schneider, Managing Director at Navigant Economics, discusses the complexity of derivatives and offers several suggestions in which consulting firms can help in, “Complex Derivatives Litigation—How Experts Can Help.” The article was recently published in The Journal on the Law of Investment & Risk Management Products.

September 2, 2011

Navigant Economics Managing Director and Principal Jeff Eisenach was interviewed on Fox Business on the results of his recent study for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, The Impact of State Employment Policies on Job Growth.  To view the interview, click here.

September 1, 2011

On September 1, 2011, Hal Singer, Managing Director of Navigant Economics, was interviewed by Deirdre Bolton and Matt Miller on Bloomberg Television's "InsideTrack" to discuss the U.S. Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit against AT&T Inc.'s $39 billion takeover bid for T-Mobile USA Inc.  To view the full interview, click here. 

July 7, 2011

Hal Singer, Managing Director of Navigant Economics, and affiliates Gerald Faulhaber and Robert Hahn, evaluate the 14th and 15th FCC Annual Wireless Competition Reports in "Assessing Competition in U.S. Wireless Markets: Review of the FCC's Competition Reports."

The authors released a new analysis of the just-released FCC 15th Wireless Competition Report and have found the Agency failed to adequately account for evidence of healthy competition in the wireless market. According to the paper, this year's and last year's FCC competition reports lead industry stakeholders to erroneous conclusions about the state of competition and thus, may adversely influence regulatory policy. The authors analyzed a database of thousands of cell phone bills and found no statistically significant relationship between what a customer paid and the concentration of wireless providers in that customer's local area.

The authors explain that this finding, along with the fact that wireless prices have declined over time as industry concentration has increased, refutes the structure-conduct hypothesis that supports the FCC's market-share analysis.

June 6, 2011

Managing Director Hal Singer explains why the AT&T/T-Mobile merger will not necessarily lead to higher prices on Forbes.com.

June 3, 2011

Mohan Rao, Managing Director at Navigant Economics, and Jonathan Tomlin, Principal at Navigant Economics, explain the important implications for patent infringement litigation of the Federal Circuit's recent ruling in Uniloc v. Microsoft in their article "The Demise of the 25% Rule," published in Intellectual Asset Management.

May 13, 2011

Cliff Hamal, Managing Director of Navigant Economics, together with Julie Carey and Christopher Ring, have authored a new study, "Spent Nuclear Fuel Management: How Centralized Interim Storage can Expand Options and Reduce Costs," a work sponsored by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future.

The nation's spent nuclear fuel management program is decades behind schedule with no firm date for a permanent repository on the horizon. Expenditures to manage the waste have been large and a new wave of costs will soon arrive as reactors retire and the incremental cost of continued storage at the reactor sites dramatically increases.

For decades, in order to deal with these costs and other issues, there has been interest in pursuing centralized interim storage of spent nuclear fuel. Under various scenarios, such a program can provide substantial benefits to America's spent fuel management program, including: cost savings, better controls, increased safety, operational flexibility and support for new nuclear power development, among others. Total costs associated with centralized interim storage could total $7 billion or more--a daunting cost that has dampened enthusiasm for this alternative.

The new study looks at the issues facing today's decision makers, with recognition that those decisions will be revised in the future based on ongoing developments. The report indicates, "A centralized interim storage facility could prove invaluable, but under other circumstances the downside is relatively modest--if the facility is not needed total expenditures can be limited." Thus, the facility could be either expanded or cancelled in the future, and this flexibility eliminates the possibility that a decision to go forward today will result in large expenditures that are not cost effective. Rather than attempt to predict exactly how such a facility will evolve and be used, the study goes on to say, "A decision today puts in motion a direction, but that direction can evolve over time in response to new developments."

In working with the Blue Ribbon Commission, Hamal said, "We recognized that studies that try to predict what will transpire in the decades ahead do not give decision makers the information they need to face the current options. There are too many uncertainties. What we needed to do was explore how taking steps forward, at a modest cost, would put future decisions makers in a better position to deal with whatever developments occur."

In keeping with this approach, the study faces these uncertainties head-on, with consideration of wide-ranging dates for the opening of a final repository. It also deals directly with uncertainties over construction costs, transportation costs, yearly shipment quantities and reactor lifetimes. It evaluates options for phasing the centralized interim storage option, both with respect to the size of the facility and the potential for multiple facilities. It also addresses the potential for the centralized interim storage facility to expand its capabilities over time to play a more significant role in the overall spent nuclear fuel management program, with the addition of capabilities for bare fuel management, canister repackaging and even supporting reprocessing.

One compelling, and potentially controversial finding of the report is that priority needs to be given to the movement of fuel from reactors that are either already shut down or nearing decommissioning. Savings of billions of dollars (more than $6 billion in one scenario) can reasonably be expected when shipments are made on the basis of lowering storage costs, rather than the oldest-fuel-first approach that has been assumed for most planning analysis. The study demonstrates that the alternative approach not only has huge savings, but provides efficiency benefits to the utilities. And, perhaps most important, utilities do not need to hold any spent fuel past the date it would have otherwise shipped the last of its fuel.

The report emphasizes that the current centralized interim storage decision is one involving tens of millions of dollars over the next decade to attempt to site, design and permit a facility. If this step is taken today future decision makers will have an option to pursue full implementation of the strategy, which has the potential for saving billions of dollars in the coming decades. Alternatively, such actions could be taken in the years ahead, but time will have been lost and the potential full benefit of an early facility will be lost. The study concludes, "Having dug through the many reports that assess the centralized storage option and having conducted extensive analysis, we find ourselves drawn to the conclusion that it would be prudent to take actions now to move toward centralized interim storage."

The report is available on the Blue Ribbon Commission's website or here.

April 13, 2011

A new study from Managing Director Jeff Eisenach and Director Kevin Caves examines Rural Utilities Service broadband subsidy programs and concludes that they are not a cost-effective means of achieving universal broadband availability. To read the report, please click here.

March 31, 2011

Navigant Economics Managing Director Jeff Eisenach critiques a recent study by CTIA/CEA on the estimated revenues from a spectrum incentive auction to repurpose spectrum for mobile wireless use. See "Revenues from a Possible Spectrum Incentive Auction: Why the CTIA/CEA Estimate Is Not Reliable."

Dr. Eisenach cautions that efforts to estimate revenues from future spectrum auctions are fraught with difficulties. Revenues depend heavily on specific auction characteristics, such as bidding structures and the geographic features of the licenses at auction, making it difficult to use past results to predict future outcomes. Based on the information currently available about the FCC's proposal to use incentive auctions to repurpose spectrum for mobile wireless use, the revenues that might be produced by such an auction are unknowable with any degree of precision.

March 28, 2011

Navigant Economics Managing Director Jeff Eisenach explains that the evidence supports the elimination of public-utility-style regulation of telecommunications companies in his new study, "Competition in the New Jersey Communications Market: Implications for Reform."

Dr. Eisenach examines telecommunications competition in the state of New Jersey, and concludes that competition has developed to the point where the regulatory reforms under consideration by the New Jersey legislature, including the removal of public-utility-style telecommunications regulations, would benefit consumers.

March 24, 2011

The Economist quoted Navigant Economics Managing Director Hal Singer about the likely competitive effects of AT&T's pending acquisition of T-Mobile. Dr. Singer explained that T-Mobile does not likely discipline the prices that AT&T charges for wireless service. His perspective on how the antitrust agencies will consider the merger appeared in Harvard Business Review.

March 16, 2011

Navigant Economics is hosting a reception to celebrate the expansion of our antitrust economics practice at the 2011 ABA Antitrust Spring Meeting on March 31, 2011, 6-7:30 p.m., at the JW Marriott (Salon F) in Washington, D.C. Please join us and meet our new colleagues Debra Aron, Julie Carey, Cliff Hamal, Rob Kneuper, James Langenfeld, Stephan Levy, Bruce McConihe, Joe Pace, George Schink, Laura Robinson, Mohan Rao, Kate Rodenrys, Jack Staines, Jonathan Tomlin, Walter Vandaele, and Thomas Vander Veen.

During the reception, Michael Green, President & Creative Director of Liquid Assets Consulting Group, will be presenting a wine tasting of Great Wines from Regions You Probably Haven't Heard of, but Should Know. Please stop by and sample Michael's top picks.

If you wish to attend, please contact Molly Wells at (202) 973-2464 or molly.wells@naviganteconomics.com.

March 15, 2011

Navigant Economics Managing Director Hal Singer will participate in a panel discussion, "With or Without Merit, Class Certification Requires Commonality," at the ABA Section of Antitrust Law 59th Annual Spring Meeting on Wednesday, March 30, 2011, 9-10:30 a.m., at the JW Marriott in Washington, D.C. Also featured on the panel are Matthew W. Sawchak (Ellis & Winters LLP), David Rosenberg (Harvard Law School), Pierre Cremieux (Analysis Group Inc.), Leslie John (Ballard Spahr LLP), and Alanna Rutherford (Boies Schiller & Flexner LLP).

The panel discussion will address the consideration of economic evidence in proving common impact at the class certification stage and the resultant scrutiny of the merits. Panelists will explore the legal landscape since Hydrogen and Wal-Mart and how to approach common methods of proof in a non-bifurcated approach.

A related article by Dr. Singer, "Economic Evidence of Common Impact for Class Certification in Antitrust Cases: A Two-Step Analysis," is forthcoming in Antitrust magazine.

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