Prices do not always reflect costs and often for legitimate reasons.  While somebody must pay for networks, it is common for some consumers or firms to pay more than others.  In some cases, however, users or suppliers find ways to avoid or shift costs to others and thereby enrich themselves. Absent some overriding public benefit, [...]

While there are some holdout forecasters, the consensus is that the U.S. economy is in or on the threshold of serious recession that promises to halt the long trend of job creation, productivity gains, and per capita income growth Americans have enjoyed in recent years.  The prospect of economic distress has set off discussions of [...]

Policymakers are in desperate need to develop a sound and comprehensive energy policy.  However, the steps being considered – investing in more expensive alternative fuels, carbon taxes, cap-and-trade schemes, conservation and so on – all require consumers to make sacrifices.  This ConsumerGram looks at the evidence and finds that increased investment and use in information [...]

Citing an incident where Comcast apparently degraded its service to a handful of bandwidth-intensive online users to relieve traffic congestion and provide bandwidth to its other customers, a coalition of “public interest” groups and individuals petitioned the FCC to forbid Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from managing congestion on their networks.  However, as with the often-cited [...]