Economic theory on media markets is flawed
The recent Federal Communications Commission ruling to relax restrictions on US media ownership has set off a fire-storm in Washington. Last week the Senate commerce committee approved a bill to overturn the decision, a move that is likely to mark the beginning of a protracted struggle in Congress.
The FCC's new rules allow a single company to own television stations reaching 45 per cent of the national market (up from 35 per cent). They permit companies to own more than one television station in most markets. And they open the way for common ownership of television stations and newspapers in the same cities
The authors of these rules have a powerful economic argument on which to rest their case. The question, though, is whether this argument is truly relevant to the issue at hand.
As Michael Powell, the FCC chairman, has acknowledged, the whole movement for deregulation of the airwaves can be traced back to a single academic article that Ronald Coase - a future Nobel laureate - published in 1959. In just 40 pages, he transformed the study of broadcast regulation, arguing that the only way to allocate bandwidth efficiently was to allow it to be traded freely in the private marketplace, just like land or any other scarce resource. The FCC, Coase concluded, had been created in error, based on the false belief that scarce frequencies had to be allocated by government fiat.
"It is a commonplace of economics," he wrote, "that almost all resources used in the economic system (and not simply radio and television frequencies) are limited in amount and scarce . . . It is true that some mechanism has to be employed to decide who . . . should be allowed to use the scarce resource. But the way this is usually done in the American economic system is to employ the price mechanism, and this allocates resources to users without the need for government regulation."
Here, in just a few sentences, is the core argument now driving the FCC to deregulate. But while Coase's economic reasoning was impeccable, his analysis of the FCC itself and its public interest rationale was severely flawed.
Coase wrongly assumed that when Congress created the Federal Radio Commission in 1927 and the Federal Communications Commission seven years later, the main goal was to prevent interference across the broadcast spectrum as efficiently as possible. As the historical record makes clear, however, Congress's main intent was in fact to prevent control over the airwaves from falling into too few hands because of the risk to democracy.
In 1926, during an early congressional debate over federal radio regulation, a Texas congressman named Luther Johnson aptly expressed the prevailing concern. "They [the broadcasting stations] can mould and crystallise sentiment as no agency in the past has been able to do," he exclaimed. "If the strong arm of the law does not prevent monopoly ownership . . . American thought and American politics will be largely at the mercy of those who operate these stations."
Clearly, Johnson and many others on Capitol Hill believed that radio was not just another commodity. It was, said one congressman, "the most potent political instrument of the future". Newspapers were also a potent political resource, but (according to Johnson and others) did not need to be regulated because there was no limit to the number that could be created. The radio spectrum, in contrast, was both politically potent and scarce.
Coase missed this argument because he viewed the problem mostly through an economic lens. And it appears that his disciples at the FCC, including Mr Powell, may be making the same mistake today. The difficulty, of course, is that the logic of the market goes only so far. If every scarce resource were best allocated through the price mechanism, it could be argued that votes should be allocated in the same way, by auctioning them to the highest bidder or allowing citizens to buy and sell voting rights at will. The absurdity of such a proposition is obvious, making a mockery of one of America's most sacred democratic principles.
Yet it highlights a fundamental question: is the broadcast spectrum more analogous to land, as Coase believed, or to votes, as many in Congress seemed to believe in the early 20th century? That is the issue today's legislators must resolve as they ponder whether to overturn the FCC decision.
传媒市场套用经济学行不通
美国联邦通讯委员会（FCC）最近通过一项有关放宽媒体所有权限制的规定，这在华盛顿掀起了一场轩然大波。为此，参议院商务委员会上周通过了一项议案，拟推翻这项规定。此举意味着国会内部一场长期斗争很可能就此展开。
美国联邦通讯委员会的新规定允许任何一家电视公司的全国观众覆盖率达到45%（此前为35%）。在大多数地区，公司可以拥有一家以上的电视台。新规定同时宣布，传媒公司可以在一座城市中同时拥有报纸和电视台这两种不同的媒体。
制定这些新规则的人可以有充足的理由从经济学的角度来解释他们的决定。然而问题在于，这些理由和眼前的实际问题并没有多大关系。
美国联邦通讯委员会主席迈克?#40077;威尔(Michael Powell)认为，逐步放松广播频率管制的思路源自罗纳德?#31185;斯(Ronald Coase)于1959年发表的一篇学术论文。科斯后来成为了诺贝尔经济学奖得主。在这篇短短40页纸的论文中，科斯对广播频率法规作了仔细研究，并提出只有允许频率资源象土地或其他稀缺资源那样在高度私有化的市场环境下自由交易，才能提高其使用效率。科斯总结道，人们错误地认为，广播频率是一种稀缺资源，必须由政府按相应规则进行分配，这才导致了美国联邦通讯委员会的成立。因此，设立美国联邦通讯委员会本身就是一个错误。
科斯写道：“这是经济学中的老生常谈了。日常经济生活中使用的所有资源（而不仅仅是电视广播的频率）在数量上都是有限而稀缺的… …我们确实有必要设立一种机制来决定由谁… …来使用这些稀缺资源。但是在美国的经济体系中，这些资源通常是由价格机制来分配的，而不是靠政府的规章制度。”
正是以上寥寥数语的论断促使美国联邦通讯委员会下决心放宽对传媒市场的管制。然而，尽管科斯的论证在经济学上无懈可击，他对美国联邦通讯委员会本身和其作为政府机构在公共利益方面理念的分析却有着严重的纰漏。
1927年，美国国会设立了联邦无线电委员会（Federal Radio Commission），7年之后又设立了联邦通讯委员会。科斯错误地认为，国会此举的主要目的是为了最有效地阻止为抢夺无线频率资源而引发的冲突。然而，相关历史档案证明，国会的主要意图其实是为了防止无线媒体的控制权落入少数人手中，以免给美国的民主制度带来危害。
早在1926年，国会中就展开了一场关于联邦无线电管理条例的辩论。当时，德克萨斯州议员路德?#32422;翰逊(Luther Johnson)的发言很好地表达了人们担心的主要问题。他说：“它们（意指广播电台）可以随意改变或塑造人们的思想感情，这是过去任何一种力量都无法办到的。如果强大的法律都不能防止垄断的情况发生… …那么美国的思想和政治将在很大程度上被那些广播电台的经营者所控制，由他们说了算。”
很明显，约翰逊和其他许多国会议员相信，无线电广播不仅仅是另外一种普通商品。一位国会议员认为，它是“未来最有力的政治武器。”虽然有人认为报纸也是一种强有力的政治资源，但是约翰逊及其同僚们认为，报纸的种类和数量在理论上可以是无限的，因而不需要政府的管制。相比之下，广播频率既是强有力的政治武器，同时也是一种稀缺资源。
由于科斯基本上只从经济学的角度出发进行研究，所以他没想到国会议员们会这样考虑问题但是，如今科斯在美国联邦通讯委员会中的信徒，包括鲍威尔先生自己，似乎也犯了同样的错误。这中间的疑难之处在于，有很多现象仅靠市场理论是无法解释的。例如，如果价格机制能使每一种稀缺资源都得到最合理的分配，那么我们可以说，选票也能通过同样的手段进行分配了：只要将选票拍卖给出价最高的竞标者，或者允许公民自由买卖选举权就可以了。显然，这种推论是荒谬的，它将使美国最为神圣的民主制度成为一个笑柄。
其实双方的分歧说到底是这样一个根本问题：广播频率的性质到底是更接近科斯所认为的土地呢，还是更接近20世纪初许多国会议员所认为的选票？这是今天的立法者必须解决的问题，否则，他们就不知道是否该推翻美国联邦通讯委员会的决定。
