Wright, Ginsburg, Lipsky and Yun: Connecting Vertical Merger Guidelines to...
[TOTM: The following is part of a symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines. The entire series of posts is available here.] This post is authored by Joshua D. Wright...
View ArticleWerden and Froeb: The Conspicuous Silences of the Proposed Vertical Merger...
[TOTM: The following is part of a symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines. The entire series of posts is available here.] This post is authored by Gregory J. Werden...
View ArticleJacobson: Vertical Mergers 2020 — A Missed Opportunity to Clarify Merger...
[TOTM: The following is part of a symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines. The entire series of posts is available here. This post is authored by Jonathan M....
View ArticleBrennan: Guidance on Enforcement Against “Pure” Vertical Mergers: It’s...
[TOTM: The following is part of a symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines. The entire series of posts is available here.] This post is authored by Timothy J....
View ArticleCernak: Who Bears the Burden on Elimination of Double Marginalization in the...
[TOTM: The following is part of a symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines. The entire series of posts is available here. This post is authored by Steven J. Cernak...
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Fruits: Messy Mergers and Muddled Guidelines (Or, “Orange You Glad I Didn’t...
[TOTM: The following is part of a symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines. The entire series of posts is available here. This post is authored by Eric Fruits (Chief...
View ArticlePozen: The Missed Opportunity for International Harmonization in the Draft...
[TOTM: The following is part of a symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines. The entire series of posts is available here. This post is authored by Sharis Pozen...
View ArticleSher: Implications of the Draft Vertical Merger Guidelines for Vertical...
[TOTM: The following is part of a symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines. The entire series of posts is available here. This post is authored by Scott Sher...
View ArticleRybnicek: The Draft Vertical Merger Guidelines Would Do More Harm Than Good
[TOTM: The following is part of a symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines. The entire series of posts is available here. This post is authored by Jan Rybnicek...
View ArticleWhite: The Missing Market Definition Standard in the Draft Vertical Guidelines
[TOTM: The following is part of a symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines. The entire series of posts is available here. This post is authored by Lawrence J. White...
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Manne & Stout 1: The Illogic of a Contract/Merger Equivalency Assumption in...
[TOTM: The following is part of a symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines. The entire series of posts is available here. This post is authored by Geoffrey A. Manne...
View ArticleManne & Stout 2: Against Incorporating a Contract/Merger Equivalency...
In our first post, we discussed the weaknesses of an important theoretical underpinning of efforts to expand vertical merger enforcement (including, possibly, the proposed guidelines): the...
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Politics Has No Place in Antitrust Enforcement, Left or Right
The goal of US antitrust law is to ensure that competition continues to produce positive results for consumers and the economy in general. We published a letter co-signed by twenty three of the U.S.’s...
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Making Sense of the Google Android Decision (part 4): The Commission’s...
This is the fourth, and last, in a series of TOTM blog posts discussing the Commission’s recently published Google Android decision (the first post can be found here, and the second here, and the...
View Article“You don’t get to be the umpire and have a team”: should we regulate the...
This guest post is by Patrick Todd, an England-qualified solicitor and author on competition law/policy in digital markets. The above quote is not about Democrat-nominee hopeful Elizabeth Warren’s...
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Rebuilding Trust in Coronaworld
[TOTM: The following is part of a blog series by TOTM guests and authors on the law, economics, and policy of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The entire series of posts is available here. This post is...
View ArticleA Law & Economics Perspective on Ruth Bader Ginsburg
With the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, many have already noted her impact on the law as an advocate for gender equality and women’s rights, her importance as a role model for women, and her...
View ArticleThe Dangerous Implications of Changing Antitrust Presumptions
One of the key recommendations of the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust report which seems to have bipartisan support (see Rep. Buck’s report) is shifting evidentiary burdens of proof to...
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Platform Self-Preferencing Can Be Good for Consumers and Even Competitors
Critics of big tech companies like Google and Amazon are increasingly focused on the supposed evils of “self-preferencing.” This refers to when digital platforms like Amazon Marketplace or Google...
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The FTC Did Not ‘Fumble the Future’ in Its Google Search Investigation
Politico has released a cache of confidential Federal Trade Commission (FTC) documents in connection with a series of articles on the commission’s antitrust probe into Google Search a decade ago. The...
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Breaking Down House Democrats’ Forthcoming Competition Bills
Democratic leadership of the House Judiciary Committee have leaked the approach they plan to take to revise U.S. antitrust law and enforcement, with a particular focus on digital platforms. Broadly...
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The Virtues and Pitfalls of Economic Models
Interrogations concerning the role that economic theory should play in policy decisions are nothing new. Milton Friedman famously drew a distinction between “positive” and “normative” economics,...
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How US and EU Competition Law Differ
[This post adapts elements of “Should ASEAN Antitrust Laws Emulate European Competition Policy?”, published in the Singapore Economic Review (2021). Open access working paper here.] U.S. and European...
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Breaking Down the American Choice and Innovation Online Act
The American Choice and Innovation Online Act (previously called the Platform Anti-Monopoly Act), introduced earlier this summer by U.S. Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), would significantly change the...
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Antitrust Dystopia and Antitrust Nostalgia
The dystopian novel is a powerful literary genre. It has given us such masterpieces as Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451. Though these novels often shed light on the risks of...
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Is There Any Market Power in Online Display Advertising?
A lawsuit filed by the State of Texas and nine other states in December 2020 alleges, among other things, that Google has engaged in anticompetitive conduct related to its online display-advertising...
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Amazon Italy’s Efficiency Offense
Early last month, the Italian competition authority issued a record 1.128 billion euro fine against Amazon for abuse of dominance under Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European...
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Intermediaries: The Hero We Need?
Intermediaries may not be the consumer welfare hero we want, but more often than not, they are one that we need. In policy discussions about the digital economy, a background assumption that...
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App Stores as Public Utilities?
In a new paper, Giuseppe Colangelo and Oscar Borgogno investigate whether antitrust policy is sufficiently flexible to keep up with the dynamics of digital app stores, and whether regulatory...
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Privacy and Security Risks of Interoperability and Sideloading Mandates
There has been a wave of legislative proposals on both sides of the Atlantic that purport to improve consumer choice and the competitiveness of digital markets. In a new working paper published by the...
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Final DMA: Now We Know Where We’re Going, but We Still Don’t Know Why
After years of debate and negotiations, European Lawmakers have agreed upon what will most likely be the final iteration of the Digital Markets Act (“DMA”), following the March 24 final round of...
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Suggested Redline Edits to the DOJ’s Letter to Judiciary Committee Leadership
The Biden administration finally has taken a public position on parallel House (H.R. 3816) and Senate (S. 2992) bills that would impose new welfare-reducing regulatory constraints on the ability of...
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In Apple v Epic, 9th Circuit Should Remember that Antitrust Forbids...
On March 31, I and several other law and economics scholars filed an amicus brief in Epic Games v. Apple, which is on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for Ninth Circuit. In this post, I summarize...
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Assessing Less Restrictive Alternatives and Interbrand Competition in Epic v...
The International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) filed an amicus brief on behalf of itself and 26 distinguished law & economics scholars with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the...
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The ABA’s Antitrust Law Section Sounds the Alarm on Klobuchar-Grassley
Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)—cosponsors of the American Innovation Online and Choice Act, which seeks to “rein in” tech companies like Apple, Google, Meta, and...
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How Tech Startups Could Be a Casualty of the War on Self-Preferencing
We will learn more in the coming weeks about the fate of the proposed American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA), legislation sponsored by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Chuck Grassley...
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The Competition and Transparency in Digital Advertising Act Is Fatally Flawed
[The following is a guest post from Andrew Mercado, a research assistant at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and an adjunct professor and research assistant at George Mason’s Antonin...
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AICOA Is Neither Urgently Needed Nor Good: A Response to Professors Scott...
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on Antitrust’s Uncertain Future: Visions of Competition in the New Regulatory Landscape. Information on the authors and...
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Winter in Helsinki
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on Antitrust’s Uncertain Future: Visions of Competition in the New Regulatory Landscape. Information on the authors and...
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The Bitter Fruits of Federal Antitrust ‘Reform’ Legislation
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on Antitrust’s Uncertain Future: Visions of Competition in the New Regulatory Landscape. Information on the authors and...
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The Catch-22 of AICOA’s Guidelines
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on Antitrust’s Uncertain Future: Visions of Competition in the New Regulatory Landscape. Information on the authors and...
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Antitrust Populists Don’t Seem to Care About the Poor
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on Antitrust’s Uncertain Future: Visions of Competition in the New Regulatory Landscape. Information on the authors and...
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The Woman in the High Office
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on Antitrust’s Uncertain Future: Visions of Competition in the New Regulatory Landscape. Information on the authors and...
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A Day in the Fair New World of Perfectly Open Platforms
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on Antitrust’s Uncertain Future: Visions of Competition in the New Regulatory Landscape. Information on the authors and...
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The Road to Antitrust’s Least Glorious Hour
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on Antitrust’s Uncertain Future: Visions of Competition in the New Regulatory Landscape. Information on the authors and...
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The Case Against Self-Preferencing as a New Antitrust Offense
The practice of so-called “self-preferencing” has come to embody the zeitgeist of competition policy for digital markets, as legislative initiatives are undertaken in jurisdictions around the world...
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7 Big Questions About the Open App Markets Act
With just a week to go until the U.S. midterm elections, which potentially herald a change in control of one or both houses of Congress, speculation is mounting that congressional Democrats may seek...
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FTC Biweekly UMC Roundup – Mountain of Puffery Edition
Research still matters, so I recommend video from the Federal Trade Commission’s 15th Annual Microeconomics Conference, if you’ve not already seen it. It’s a valuable event, and it’s part of the FTC’s...
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No, Mergers Are Not Like ‘The Ultimate Cartel’
[This is a guest post from Mario Zúñiga of EY Law in Lima, Perú. An earlier version was published in Spanish on the author’s personal blog. He gives thanks to Hugo Figari and Walter Alvarez for their...
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Reining in Digital Competition to No Good End: Will AICOA and OAMA Rise from...
The 117th Congress closed out without a floor vote on either of the major pieces of antitrust legislation introduced in both chambers: the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) and the...
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