WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Partnership for Public Service has revealed the 2021 recipient of the prestigious Paul A. Volcker Career Achievement Media.
It is being awarded to the Senior Economic Advisor in the FCC’s Office of Economics and Analytics.
Receiving the award is Evan Kwerel, Ph.D.
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel offered hearty congratulations to Kwerel. “You can’t properly tell the story of spectrum auctions without talking about Evan Kwerel,” she said. “In 1985, Evan wrote a white paper suggesting that the Commission should allocate spectrum through auctions. In 1993, Congress gave the FCC the authority to conduct spectrum auctions and Evan drafted the Commission’s rules and led its auction design effort. In 1994, the Commission successfully executed the first-ever simultaneous multi-round spectrum auction. Since then, the FCC has completed over 100 spectrum auctions, and this model has been adopted for spectrum auctions around the world.”
In 2002, Kwerel would again help engineer a first-of-its-kind auction by co-authoring a white paper that outlined what became the broadcast incentive auction. In 2017, the FCC concluded the world’s first incentive auction, reallocating broadcast spectrum to meet the growing demand for mobile broadband.
“Words can’t quantify the impact of Evan’s work nearly as effectively as the numbers do,” Rosenworcel said. “The spectrum auctions he helped pioneer have added over $200 billion to the U.S. Treasury. And those very same auctions have helped to unlock more than $1 trillion in benefits for the American people. On behalf of everyone at the FCC and of the American people, I thank Evan for his public service, and congratulate him on winning a Service to America Medal.”
