A nonpartisan, student-led affiliate of the Haas Center for Public Service

Federal Communications Commission, Office of Economics and Analytics – Washington, D.C.

Summer 2023 Fellow: N/A

Due to security clearance constraints, applicants for this fellowship must be US citizens.

Office Description
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC; www.fcc.gov) is an independent agency with regulatory authority over the telecommunications and electronic media sectors, including spectrum management. The Office of Economics and Analytics (OEA) is the principal source for economic analysis, design and implementation of auctions, and the use and management of data. OEA has a staff of 100, with a plurality of economists, along with attorneys, engineers, and policy analysts. It provides analysis, policy research, and advice on the full range of issues before the agency.

Description of the Work
Student fellows generally work on a portfolio of projects, supporting the agency’s rulemaking, merger review, and/or data collection and analysis functions. Specific tasks could include collecting and/or “cleaning” data and, working with senior staff, performing various types of statistical analysis. Other possible tasks include summarizing and critiquing submissions in FCC proceedings, tracking relevant developments in technology and business practices through Internet research, or identifying academic literature relevant to a particular communications policy question. Through working as part of project teams, attending meetings with industry and other outside interested parties, and observing FCC meetings, the fellow will gain a detailed understanding of the operations of a regulatory agency.

Sample tasks include:

  • Analysis of 911 outages by scraping Twitter data and examining FCC outage reports
  • Coding to scrape broadband pricing data from company websites
  • Internet research to determine characteristics of “over-the-top” video packages in the US and media policy issues and regulation in Australia
  • Use of STATA to compile dataset (from Census sources and the FCC broadband map)
  • Support for staff research: literature review on efficient spectrum usage and zero rating of broadband content; formatting a journal article for publication

Desired Skills
Our ideal candidate would be an economics or political science or computer science major who has strong quantitative skills—e.g., statistics, econometrics, coding, some coursework in policy analysis, and good written and oral communications skills.
Main Fellowship Disciplines: Economics, Public Policy, Political Science and Computer Science