Catherine Matraves, Acting Chief
As Acting Chief of the Office of Economics and Analytics (OEA), Kate leads this Office which is responsible for expanding and deepening the use of economic analysis in Commission policy making, enhancing the development and use of auctions, antitrust analysis in proposed mergers, the biennial Communications Marketplace Report (as well as others), and implementing consistent and effective agency-wide data practices and policies. Kate joined the Commission in 2010 as an economist in the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau (WTB). While in WTB, she rose to Deputy Division Chief. She joined OEA as a Deputy Division Chief in the Economic Analysis Division when OEA was formed in 2018. She has served OEA as the Deputy Chief for Economics since January 2022. She is an expert in telecommunications, including merger analysis, broadband policy, adoption, and access, and the economics of spectrum and spectrum management.
Prior to joining the Federal Communications Commission, Kate was first a Research Fellow at the WZB (Berlin Social Science Center). She later taught economics at various universities, including Texas A&M, Albion College, and Michigan State University. Kate received her PhD in Economics from the University of East Anglia in England in 1997. She specialized in microeconomics, in particular, industrial organization. Her dissertation addressed issues related to sunk costs and market structure.