Last week, FCC Commissioner Kathleen Q. Abernathy spoke to the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies on consumer protection efforts. Yesterday, she addressed a Manhattan Institute confab on property rights.

Both speeches are interesting and were no doubt well received by the audience. In the first instance, she put forward a critique of the California model of a Consumer Bill of Rights that comes before the CaPUC next week. (Scroll to page 16.) The presentation Monday highlighted major differences between the regulation of property rights in the wireline and wireless marketplace.

It is rare enough to witness a regulator who can explain the link between markets and property rights. Abernathy goes one step further and shows that when brought together, property rights in markets produce consumer benefits.