Boliek Right Choice as FCC Chief Economist, AEI's Eisenach Says, Citing New Econ Office

Babette Boliek is a good choice as FCC chief economist, to oversee opening the Office of Economics and Analytics, said Jeffrey Eisenach, visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a job Boliek has also held. Eisenach noted some fear the new office will take the economists out of bureaus where they are “embedded” with the lawyers who “really” run the FCC. “While the ‘Siberia effect’ is a valid concern in theory, the FCC Order establishing the new office makes it unlikely by giving it real bureaucratic ‘throw weight,’ including specific responsibility for overseeing spectrum auctions and a requirement that the office review every rulemaking before it is released to the public and conduct a formal benefit-cost analysis of all major rules,” Eisenach blogged. It “has a fighting chance to ensure that future FCC decisions are made through multidisciplinary collaboration in which economic analysis plays a significant role,” he wrote. “That has often been the case at the Federal Trade Commission, whose Bureau of Economics dates to 1915.”