Harvey J. Levin
| Harvey J. Levin | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
July 1, 1924 New York, New York (raised in Forest Hills, Queens) |
| Died | April 30, 1992 (aged 67) |
| Nationality | American |
| Institution |
Hofstra University (1955–92) Columbia (1953–55, 1947–49) Penn State (1950–54) Bard (1949–50) Rutgers (1948–49) |
| Field | Regulatory economics, Communications economics |
| Alma mater |
Columbia (Ph.D. 1953, A.M. 1948) Hamilton (A.B. '44) |
| Influences |
John Kenneth Galbraith John Maynard Keynes Broadus Mitchell William Vickrey |
| Contributions | licensing and auctioning of broadcast frequencies |
Harvey Joshua Levin (July 1, 1924 – April 30, 1992) was an American economist. He was university research professor in the Department of Economics at Hofstra University (1989–92), Augustus B. Weller Professor of Economics at Hofstra (1964–89), and founder and director of its Public Policy Workshop (1975–92). He had previously served as professor at Columbia University. He was also a senior research associate at the Center for Policy Research.
Levin is generally considered the first economist to propose the auctioning of broadcast frequencies as a means of allocating the airwaves as a natural resource. His work anticipated the evolution of television, satellites, cellular telephones, electronic remote boxes and wireless internet, and their demands on increasingly congested airwaves.
He consulted for the President's Office of Telecommunications Management, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the FCC's Public Advisory Committee on the World Administrative Radio Conferences (WARC88), the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress, the General Accounting Office, the Committee for Economic Development, the Department of Justice/Antitrust Division, and the Federal Trade Commission/Bureau of Economics.
For forty years spanning five decades, Levin researched, published, and proposed innovative economic and regulatory solutions that anticipated — and later addressed — the problems of competing rights and access to the airwaves, or electromagnetic spectrum, and its overuse and congestion. According to his colleagues, he was several decades ahead of his time in addressing the economic ramifications of the radio spectrum, long before others were concerned with the airwaves as a resource.
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