Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources

Infrastructure The Social Value of Shared Resources

By Brett M. Frischmann
Oxford University Press USA June 2012

Specifications

ISBN-13
9780199895656
Publisher
Oxford University Press USA
Publication
June 2012
Format
Hardback , 436 pages
Jurisdiction
U.S. ? Countri(es) for reference only

Details

  • Develops a concept of infrastructure to analyze and evaluate resource valuation and management
  • Integrates the "commons" principle and the importance of nondiscrimination
  • Crosses many disciplines and shows common threads that drive policy issues
  • Rich in economic theory and research which is communicated easily and effectively
  • Methodic and systematic in its approach
  • Contains an extensive bibliography to facilitate further research

Infrastructure resources are the subject of many contentious public policy debates, including what to do about crumbling roads and bridges, whether and how to protect our natural environment, energy policy, even patent law reform, universal health care, network neutrality regulation and the future of the Internet. Each of these involves a battle to control infrastructure resources, to establish the terms and conditions under which the public receives access, and to determine how the infrastructure and various dependent systems evolve over time. 

Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources devotes much needed attention to understanding how society benefits from infrastructure resources and how management decisions affect a wide variety of interests. The book links infrastructure, a particular set of resources defined in terms of the manner in which they create value, withcommons, a resource management principle by which a resource is shared within a community. The infrastructure commons ideas have broad implications for scholarship and public policy across many fields ranging from traditional infrastructure like roads to environmental economics to intellectual property to Internet policy.

Economics has become the methodology of choice for many scholars and policymakers in these areas. The book offers a rigorous economic challenge to the prevailing wisdom, which focuses primarily on problems associated with ensuring adequate supply. The author explores a set of questions that, once asked, seem obvious: what drives the demand side of the equation, and how should demand-side drivers affect public policy? Demand for infrastructure resources involves a range of important considerations that bear on the optimal design of a regime for infrastructure management. The book identifies resource valuation and attendant management problems that recur across many different fields and many different resource types, and it develops a functional economic approach to understanding and analyzing these problems and potential solutions.

Readership: Academics and students in Law (various fields), Economics (various fields), Public Policy, Political Science, Information Studies, Civil Engineering, Computer Science, Environmental Science, Communications; Think tanks and policy wonks (e.g., in Washington DC)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction
Part I: Foundations
Chapter One: Defining Infrastructure and Commons Management
Chapter Two: Overview of Infrastructure Economics
Chapter Three: Microeconomic Building Blocks
Part II: A Demand Side Theory of Infrastructure and Commons Management
Chapter Four: Infrastructural Resources
Chapter Five: Managing Infrastructure as Commons
Part III: Complications 
Chapter Six: Infrastructure Pricing
Chapter Seven: Congestion
Chapter Eight: Supply Side Incentives
Part IV: Traditional Infrastructure
Chapter Nine: Transportation Infrastructure-Roads
Chapter Ten: Communications Infrastructure-Telecommunications
Part V: Nontraditional Infrastructure
Chapter Eleven: Environmental Infrastructure
Chapter Twelve: Intellectual Infrastructure
Part VI: Modern Debates
Chapter Thirteen: Network Neutrality
Chapter Fourteen: Application to Other Modern Debates
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Brett M. Frischmann, Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University

Brett M. Frischmann is Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, where he teaches intellectual property and internet law. After clerking for the Honorable Fred I. Parker of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and practicing at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, DC, he joined the Loyola University, Chicago law faculty in 2002. He has held visiting appointments at Cornell, Fordham, and Syracuse. He is a co-author of one of the leading internet law casebooks entitled: Cyberlaw: Problems of Policy and Jurisprudence in the Information Age, 4th Edition, along with Patricia L. Bellia, Paul Schiff Berman, and David G. Post. Professor Frischmann has written articles for the Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review,Review of Law and Economics, and many other leading journals.

Reviews

"In Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources, Brett Frischmann's argument is timely and important. What he is attempting here is nothing less than a reimagining of how economics thinks about infrastructure. His argument ranges from intellectual property to telecommunications to the case for government investment in roads and bridges." 
--Mark A. Lemley 
William H. Neukom Professor, Stanford Law School 
Director, Stanford Program in Law, Science, and Technology 
Partner, Durie Tangri LLP 

"Faculty and students across the social sciences and engineering will all find Brett Frischmann's new book to provide essential guidance for the analysis of diverse types of infrastructure resources and how policies affect the effectiveness, efficiency, fairness, and sustainability of outcomes. Rarely can one find such a broad and useful foundation for digging in and understanding the complexities of modern infrastructures. An extraordinary book." 
--Elinor Ostrom, Indiana University, Co-Recipient, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, 2009 

"In Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources, Brett Frischmann persuades us that infrastructure in its many guises is probably our most important national asset. Looking to law, economics, and regulatory structures, he helps us to define it, and illuminates the many ways it is funded and shared. This book might change the way you look at the economy." 
--Suzanne Scotchmer, Faculty Director, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology 
Professor of Law, Economics and Public Policy 

"Brett Frischmann's excellent contribution to the policy debate surrounding the development and management of shared infrastructure is original, nuanced, and, in keeping with his own principles, accessible. It is important reading for anyone interested in economic policy and regulation." 
--Howard Shelanski, Professor of Law, Georgetown University 

"Read Infrastructure and you will never see the world quite the same again." 
--Tim Wu, Professor of Law, Columbia Law School (Concurring Opinions) 

"The student of infrastructure policy will benefit from Frischmann's excellent treatment of public goods and social goods; spillovers and externalities; proprietary versus commons systems management; common carriage policies and open access regulation; congestion pricing strategies; and the debate over price discrimination for infrastructural resources. Infrastructure deserves a spot on your shelf whether you are just beginning your investigation of these issues or if you have covered them your entire life." 
--Adam Thierer, Senior Research Fellow, The Mercatus Center at George Mason University (Concurring Opinions) 

"Brett Frischmann's excellent new book has crafted an elaborate theory of infrastructure that creates an intellectual foundation for addressing some of the most critical policy issues of our time: transportation, communication, environmental protection and beyond." 
--Laura DeNardis, Associate Professor, School of Communication at American University (Concurring Opinions) 

"Frischmann's book is an important contribution across a wide range of fields. It is a terrific achievement and I think its influence will continue to grow as we grapple with the implications of its analysis." 
-- Michael Burstein, Cardozo School of Law, PatentlyO.com

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