January 2018

Convincing President Donald Trump not to blink first during the government shutdown was a challenge that required coaxing by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), according to The Washington Post's Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey. Parker and Dawsey reported that the president's aides employed another tactic, too, as they tried to curb President Trump's urge to offer a deal that might have cost the GOP more than it ultimately gave: "The White House also made sure that senior administration officials, as well as top surrogates, were out on television pushing the president's message.

Is price diversity a bad thing for consumers or does it foster broadband take-up, especially by laggards? Academic research finds that tariff diversity is a driving factor for broadband adoption and does not impede take-up. Based on a rich original dataset with more than 10,000 residential retail broadband offers for 23 European states between 2003 and 2011, my research found that broadband demand is positively related to increased tariff diversity, especially in the presence of inter-platform competition.