Stanley M. Besen is a vice president at Charles River Associates and an expert in the economics of telecommunications policy and standards. Before joining CRA, he was a senior economist at the RAND Corporation, codirector of the Network Inquiry Special Staff at the Federal Communications Commission, and a Brookings Economic Policy Fellow at the Office of Telecommunications Policy at the Executive Office of the President. He has taught at Rice University, Columbia University, and the Georgetown University Law Center. He is the author of several books and has published extensively on the economics of standards, including "AM versus FM: The Battle of the Bands" in Industrial and Corporate Change (1992) and "The Standards Process in Telecommunications and Information Technology" in Standards, Innovation, and Competitiveness (Edward Elgar, 1995).

Edward O. Fritts began his twentieth year as the president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters this fall. As a former owner of a group of radio stations in the mid-South, he recognizes the value of local broadcasters’ involvement in governmental representation in the nation’s capital. He is known for promoting the public service activities of local broadcasters in communities across the country. He has actively encouraged a number of opportunities for stations’ community efforts by serving on the boards of the Ad Council, the National Commission Against Drunk Driving, and numerous other organizations. In addition, he was on the Individual Investors Advisory Committee of the New York Stock Exchange and is part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Committee of 100.

Harold Furchtgott-Roth is a visiting fellow at AEI. One of the few economists to have served on a federal regulatory commission, he is writing a book on telecommunications regulation. From 1997 through 2001, he served as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, where he was a forceful critic of the agency’s overregulation of communications and broadcasting markets and a frequent dissenter from its decisions. Before his appointment to the FCC, he was a chief economist for the House Committee on Commerce and a principal staff member on the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Mr. Furchtgott-Roth is the coauthor of three books: Cable TV: Regulation or Competition (1996); Economics of a Disaster: The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill (1995); and International Trade in Computer Software (1993).

Thomas W. Hazlett is a resident scholar at AEI. He is also a senior research associate of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information and a senior adviser to Analysis Group/ Economics. He was a professor and director of the program on telecommunications policy at the University of California at Davis before coming to AEI in 1998. He also served as a chief economist of the Federal Communications Commission during 1991-1992. Mr. Hazlett has written for many general-interest periodicals, including Barron’s, ForbesASAP, and the Wall Street Journal. His academic research has been published in the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Law and Economics, the Columbia Law Review, and many other scholarly journals and law reviews, and he has provided expert testimony before state and federal courts, congressional committees, foreign governments, the Department of Commerce, the Congressional Budget Office, the General Accounting Office, and the Federal Communications Commission.

Bruce M. Owen is the president and cofounder of Economists Incorporated, a Washington, D.C., consulting firm specializing in antitrust and regulatory issues. He is also a visiting professor of economics at Stanford University’s Stanford-in-Washington program. He was formerly the chief economist of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and, earlier, of the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy. He is the author or coauthor of numerous articles and eight books, including Television Economics (1974); The Regulation Game (1978); The Political Economy of Deregulation (1983); Video Economics (1992); and The Internet Challenge to Television (1999). In 1992 he headed a World Bank task force that advised the government of Argentina in drafting a new antitrust law, and more recently he has advised government agencies in Mexico and the United States on telecommunications policy.

Robert Sachs is the president and CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunica-tions Association. Before joining NCTA in August 1999, he was a principal of Continental Consulting Group. He joined Continental Cablevision in 1979 as the director of corporate development and became the senior vice president of corporate and legal affairs in 1988. He served in that capacity for the corporation and its successor, MediaOne, until January 1998. He negotiated the cable industry’s first "social contract" with the FCC and cooriginated the idea for Cable-in-the-Classroom, and industry-wide public service initiative that provides free wiring, connection, and commercial-free educational programming to schools across the country. Mr. Sachs has served as a full-time consultant to the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy and as legislative counsel to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

Gary Shapiro is the president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, the U.S. trade association representing the consumer electronics industry. Before joining the CEA, he was an associate at Squire, Sanders and Dempsey, and he has worked on Capitol Hill. He has been a leader in the development and launch of HDTV, cofounding and chairing the HDTV Model Station and serving on the board and Executive Committee of the Advanced Television Test Center. Mr. Shapiro was a member of Virginia’s groundbreaking Commission on Information Technology, which proposed legislation allowing commerce on the Internet. That legislation has since been adopted by Virginia and seventeen other states, following the commission’s model. He has been a keynote speaker at numerous conferences and conventions and has published articles on legal, lobbying, and electronics issues.

J. Gregory Sidak is the F. K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow in Law and Economics at AEI. He has served as the deputy general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission and as a senior counsel and economist on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. He is the author or coauthor of five books on network industries, including Deregulatory Takings and the Regulatory Contract: The Competitive Transformation of Network Industries in the United States; Protecting Competition from the Postal Monopoly; Toward Competition in Local Telephony; and Transmission Pricing and Stranded Costs in the Electric Power Industry. Mr. Sidak has testified before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on regulatory and constitutional law matters.

Richard E. Wiley is a senior partner at Wiley, Rein & Fielding, a Washington, D.C., law firm with the largest communications practice in the United States. He also chairs the Advisory Board of Columbia University’s Institute for Tele-Information and the Media Institute’s Board of Trustees. As a former chairman, commissioner, and general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission, he was a leading force in the agency’s initial efforts to foster increased competition and lessened regulation in the communications field. He has served as the president of the Federal Bar and Federal Communications Bar Associations and as the chairman of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice.