Valuing and Allocating Spectrum

There are 4 modules in this course. Radio spectrum supports enormous economic and social value, but determining who can use spectrum, for what purposes, and under what rules presents difficult choices. As demand for wireless connectivity and new technologies grows, understanding the economic forces that shape spectrum use becomes increasingly important for policymakers, industry participants, and anyone interested in how wireless markets develop. In this course, you’ll explore the economics of spectrum allocation and use, including how spectrum rights are defined, assigned, exchanged, and valued. You’ll examine how prices, auctions, and secondary markets can reveal information about spectrum value; use economic reasoning to consider the costs and benefits of alternative spectrum arrangements; and investigate how transaction costs, rent-seeking, imperfect information, and regulatory choices can affect allocation outcomes. You’ll also consider how flexible-use rights and market-based approaches can help spectrum move toward higher-valued uses. By the end of the course, you’ll be able to apply basic economic frameworks to real-world spectrum policy questions and evaluate the trade-offs among competing approaches to spectrum allocation. Rather than viewing spectrum policy simply as a technical problem, you’ll have a framework for understanding how incentives, institutions, markets, and policy choices interact to shape the social value created from this scarce resource. This course was developed with the support of SpectrumX, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Spectrum Innovation Center. NSF SpectrumX is funded via Award 2132700 and operated under cooperative agreement by the University of Notre Dame. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.