Out of Space? Regulation and Technical Change in Communications Satellites
分析美国联邦通信委员会对电磁频谱的监管如何影响通信卫星技术的创新方向与研发投入，指出低效的频谱分配可能扭曲技术变革的路径。
Regulatory practices by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have the effect of rationing the use of a particular resource required for communications satellite technology, the electromagnetic spectrum. Spectrum, or the airwaves, is the medium over which communications signals such as TV, telephone, and radar travel. Federal government allocation of spectrum among competing services has long been implemented to mitigate the interference that can arise between nearby signals-hence, for instance, the assignment of radio stations to unique regions along the AM and FM dials. That government regulation can and probably does fail to allocate spectrum efficiently, for all the usual economic reasons, has been attested to, criticized, and in turn the subject of proposed reformation in an economics literature both historic (radio spectrum regulation inspired Coase's theorem) and growing (including work which dates from Harvey Levin, 1971, and references cited therein, to, most recently, Stanley Besen et al., 1984). Left unaddressed, however, have been the implications of inefficient spectrum regulation for the pace and direction of technical change. Specifically, the problems of static resource misallocation may be compounded by inefficiency in induced innovation (V. Kerry Smith, 1974, 1975; Koji Okuguchi, 1975; Wesley Magat, 1976). If FCC allocations incorrectly signal the true economic scarcity of spectrum, innovation to augment spectrum and other inputs on the basis of relative scarcity may be misdirected, and the overall rate of R&D spending may be distorted accordingly. The effect of government regulation on innovation in communications satellite technology merits particular attention for several reasons. First, a recent FCC ruling will increase the cost of future satellites by requiring them to operate at FCC-mandated minimum levels of intensity of spectrum use, on top of rationed quantities of spectrum (see Federal Register, 1983, para. 69). Second, unlike other uses of spectrum, there is a large public sector component to satellite R &D spending that is also likely to be affected by FCC regulation. Undertaken by NASA, current research expenditures on advanced communications satellite technology have been justified in large part by a perceived need to develop methods that use spectrum more intensively (see NASA, 1984, and U.S. Congress, House, 1984). Third, and again distinguishing satellites from other users of spectrum, the inherently global nature of satellite technology renders satellite spectrum allocations a contentious international issue. In particular, developing countries not currently using satellite technology have expressed serious concern about future spectrum availability. In response, technical change economizing on spectrum is frequently endorsed by regulators, and moral suasion is accordingly brought to bear on industry, as an appropriate solution (see FCC, 1985, and U.S. Congress, 1982).1 This paper proceeds as follows. Section I tailors a model of induced innovation de-