Mark Cooper

The economics of collaborative production in the spectrum commons

The dramatic growth of collaborative activities relying on non-property relationships and exchange, such as WiFi devices using unlicensed spectrum, open source software, and peer-to-peer networks, pose a challenge to the dominant economic paradigm. This paper develops definitions to describe the economic and institutional base and explain the success of collaborative production. Antirivalry and inclusiveness are characteristics of collaborative goods that are found in open wireless networks. The paper demonstrates the superior economics of collaborative production in the spectrum commons and suggests policies to extend its scope including expansion of dedicated unlicensed spectrum to allow multi-frequency applications, rules for non-interfering sharing of licensed spectrum, and development of standards and protocols to reduce transaction costs

The implications of Fukushima: The US perspective

The effects of the tragedy at Japan’s Fukushima power plant will continue to reverberate over the upcoming weeks, months, and years. And, as the writers in this symposium explain, the consequences of the disaster go beyond Japan—like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, Fukushima will reshape nuclear agendas and policies in countries around the world. In this Global Forum, leading experts reflect on the current and future implications of Fukushima for their own countries—the United States, the European Union, and South Korea. Mark Cooper writes from the United States; Caroline Jorant (2011) from the European Union; and Soon Heung Chang (2011) from South Korea. In August, this forum will continue as a Roundtable at www.thebulletin.org.

Nuclear safety and affordable reactors: Can we have both?

The cost of building new nuclear reactors receives a great deal of attention in market economies, including the United States, Japan, and Germany. But in a post-Fukushima era of additional safety regulations, the economics of keeping a fleet of aging reactors online may command just as much attention. The author reviews the experience of the US nuclear reactor fleet in light of the post-Fukushima scrutiny of nuclear safety and describes the factors that have influenced, and will likely influence, future decisions about whether to own and operate nuclear reactors. He shows that safety has been the driver of nuclear costs and that the inability of the industry to deliver safe reactors at affordable costs is an endemic, long-standing problem. Nuclear power, he writes, is a complex technology based on a catastrophically dangerous resource that is vulnerable to natural events and human frailties, which suggests that nuclear safety and affordable reactors are currently incompatible and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

Egyptian State Capitalism in Crisis: Economic Policies and Political Interests

Most analyses of Egypt in the 1970s, whether political or economic, have a central concern, the liberalization policies of the Sadat regime. The reason for this focus is clear; rather striking and deep-seated changes took place in Egypt under the heading of that policy. Most analyses, however, suffer two major drawbacks: they fail to integrate the political and the economic and they take an approach with a very short historical vision. In doing so, they run the risk of critical misinterpretations of the nature of the policy, the regime and the changes in Egypt.