Richard Marsden, MA

Over the last 20 years, Mr. Marsden has worked for regulators, private companies, and law firms in more than 50 countries. His teams at NERA are particularly well known for their work on design and implementation of high-value auctions and the development of effective bid strategies. To support this work, the team has developed a suite of software tools for running, simulating, and analysing auctions. For example, Mr. Marsden’s team developed software to simulate the 2016 US Incentive Auction, which was used by broadcasters who, in aggregate, accounted for 15% (US$1.5 billion) of nationwide revenues.

Mr. Marsden has supported clients on a wide range of projects, including auction design and implementation, bid strategy advisory work, and expert witness reports related to spectrum allocation, spectrum pricing, and spectrum valuation, as well as associated litigation. Specifically, he has advised clients on spectrum auction design and implementation for 4G and 5G mobile spectrum in Belgium, Mexico, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia. He has also designed auctions for electricity interconnection capacity, off-shore wind generation sites, and gas pipeline capacity. Mr. Marsden has provided bid strategy advice to mobile operators participating in auctions for 4G and 5G mobile spectrum in more than 20 countries, including recent spectrum auctions in Australia, Canada, Germany, Poland, Spain, the UK, and the US, and to energy companies participating in capacity auctions. This work often includes developing or critiquing valuation models.

Mr. Marsden presents and publishes frequently on topics related to market design, auctions, the communications industry, and spectrum management and allocation. He has also completed major studies for the GSMA on spectrum pricing and for the European Commission on the transfer of digital dividend spectrum from broadcast to mobile use and on spectrum trading and spectrum liberalization. He is the author of a book about spectrum awards, Round-by-Round: Learnings from the First 35 Years of Spectrum Auctions (NERA, 2024); contributed a chapter to the Handbook of Spectrum Auction Design (Cambridge University Press, 2017); and is the co-author of Broadband in Europe: How Brussels Can Wire the Information Society (Springer, 2005).