Abstract In 2018, the Federal Communications Commission’s Restoring Internet Freedom Order reversed its 2015 decision to apply common carrier regulation to broadband Internet access services under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. Empirical evidence indicating negative investment effects of the regulation played a key role in this reversal, though the quantification of these investment effects were a matter of substantial controversy. This article surveys the studies cited in the recent decision and the Commission’s scrutiny of them. In all, the Commission considered eight primary works but relied on only two of them, a culling process that relied on four principles: (1) simply comparing outcomes before-and-after an event is not a valid impact analysis; (2) before-and-after comparisons are more probative if regression analysis is used to condition the outcomes by accounting for potentially relevant factors like economic growth, sales, and so forth; (3) the causal effects of a regulation are best determined with reference to a counterfactual; and (4) the application of proper methods does not excuse the use of bad data. These principles are mostly uncontroversial and are consistent with the modern practice of impact analysis.

中文翻译：

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净中性与美国投资：2018年恢复互联网自由秩序的证据回顾

摘要在2018年，联邦通信委员会的《恢复互联网自由命令》推翻了其2015年的决定，即根据1934年《通信法》第二标题将公共运营商法规应用于宽带互联网接入服务。经验证据表明，该法规的负面投资效应在以下方面起着关键作用：尽管这些投资效果的量化存在很大争议，但这种逆转是存在的。本文调查了最近决定中引用的研究以及委员会对它们的审查。委员会总共考虑了八项主要工作，但仅依靠其中两项，这是一个基于四项原则的筛​​选过程：（1）仅在事件发生前后比较结果并不是有效的影响分析；（2）如果使用回归分析通过考虑潜在的相关因素（例如经济增长，销售等）来确定结果，则前后比较更有可能；（3）法规的因果关系最好参照反事实来确定；（4）应用适当的方法并不能为不良数据的使用辩解。这些原则大多没有争议，并且与影响分析的现代实践一致。