WASHINGTON D.C. - Economist and scholar Scott Wallsten will join The Progress & Freedom Foundation November 13th as a Senior Fellow and PFF's Director of Communications Policy Studies. Wallsten has performed extensive empirical study of communications policy, most recently as a Senior Fellow with the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies and a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He joins a Foundation that has a fourteen-year track record of influential study of communications policy.

"We've long admired Scott's scholarship on communications issues," said PFF President Daniel W. Caprio, Jr. "We're pleased that Scott has agreed to join us. He brings not just his recent background in think tank scholarship but also strong credentials in academia and as an economist with prestigious institutions. As PFF moves forward with The Digital Age Communications Act and other communications policy projects, we are confident Scott will provide outstanding entrepreneurial leadership."

"I'm very excited about coming over to The Progress & Freedom Foundation," Wallsten said. "I look forward to continuing rigorous analyses and research with the hope that they contribute to good policymaking."

Before joining the Joint Center and AEI, Wallsten had been an economist at The World Bank, a scholar at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and a staff economist at the U.S. President's Council of Economic Advisers. His interests include industrial organization and public policy, and his research has focused on regulation, privatization, competition, and science and technology policy. His research has been published in numerous academic journals and his commentaries have appeared in newspapers throughout the world.

Wallsten will focus on a number of policy issues at PFF, including broadband development, reverse auctions, and international communications issues such as European Union regulations and reforms in developing countries. Peer-reviewed articles by Wallsten in recent years have dealt with issues such as how the Internet may increase trade, the economics of net neutrality, and the effects of telecommunications liberalization in developing countries.

PFF has a long history of providing comprehensive analyses of communications regulation. In the 109th Congress, Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) introduced a bill titled the Digital Age Communications Act, modeled after the DACA effort PFF led and which involved both PFF fellows and academics from universities and other think tanks. PFF scholars have been active for the last decade in addressing the regulatory conflicts that have resulted from the 1996 Telecommunications Act. The Foundation's focus is more important than ever now that the long-promised convergence of technology, content and distribution has arrived.

The Progress & Freedom Foundation is a market-oriented think tank that studies the digital revolution and its implications for public policy. It is a 501(c)(3) research & educational organization.