Archives For international center for law & economics

Searching for Antitrust Remedies, Part II

Josh Wright —  13 July 2011

In the last post, I discussed possible characterizations of Google’s conduct for purposes of antitrust analysis.  A firm grasp of the economic implications of the different conceptualizations of Google’s conduct is a necessary – but not sufficient – precondition for appreciating the inconsistencies underlying the proposed remedies for Google’s alleged competitive harms.  In this post, I want to turn to a different question: assuming arguendo a competitive problem associated with Google’s algorithmic rankings – an assumption I do not think is warranted, supported by the evidence, or even consistent with the relevant literature on vertical contractual relationships – how might antitrust enforcers conceive of an appropriate and consumer-welfare-conscious remedy?  Antitrust agencies, economists, and competition policy scholars have all appropriately stressed the importance of considering a potential remedy prior to, rather than following, an antitrust investigation; this is good advice not only because of the benefits of thinking rigorously and realistically about remedial design, but also because clear thinking about remedies upfront might illuminate something about the competitive nature of the conduct at issue.

Somewhat ironically, former DOJ Antitrust Division Assistant Attorney General Tom Barnett – now counsel for Expedia, one of the most prominent would-be antitrust plaintiffs against Google – warned (in his prior, rather than his present, role) that “[i]mplementing a remedy that is too broad runs the risk of distorting markets, impairing competition, and prohibiting perfectly legal and efficient conduct,” and that “forcing a firm to share the benefits of its investments and relieving its rivals of the incentive to develop comparable assets of their own, access remedies can reduce the competitive vitality of an industry.”  Barnett also noted that “[t]here seems to be consensus that we should prohibit unilateral conduct only where it is demonstrated through rigorous economic analysis to harm competition and thereby harm consumer welfare.”  Well said.  With these warnings well in-hand, we must turn to two inter-related concerns necessary to appreciating the potential consequences of a remedy for Google’s conduct: (1) the menu of potential remedies available for an antitrust suit against Google, and (2) the efficacy of these potential remedies from a consumer-welfare, rather than firm-welfare, perspective.

What are the potential remedies?

The burgeoning search neutrality crowd presents no lack of proposed remedies; indeed, if there is one segment in which Google’s critics have proven themselves prolific, it is in their constant ingenuity conceiving ways to bring governmental intervention to bear upon Google.  Professor Ben Edelman has usefully aggregated and discussed several of the alternatives, four of which bear mention:  (1) a la Frank Pasquale and Oren Bracha, the creation of a “Federal Search Commission,” (2) a la the regulations surrounding the Customer Reservation Systems (CRS) in the 1990s, a prohibition on rankings that order listings “us[ing] any factors directly or indirectly relating to” whether the search engine is affiliated with the link, (3) mandatory disclosure of all manual adjustments to algorithmic search, and (4) transfer of the “browser choice” menu of the EC Microsoft litigation to the Google search context, requiring Google to offer users a choice of five or so rivals whenever a user enters particular queries.

Geoff and I discuss several of these potential remedies in our paper, If Search Neutrality is the Answer, What’s the Question?  It suffices to say that we find significant consumer welfare threats from the creation of a new regulatory agency designed to impose “neutral” search results.  For now, I prefer to focus on the second of these remedies – analogized to CRS technology in the 1990s – here; Professor Edelman not only explains proposed CRS-inspired regulation, but does so in effusive terms:

A first insight comes from recognizing that regulators have already – successfully! – addressed the problem of bias in information services. One key area of intervention was customer reservation systems (CRS’s), the computer networks that let travel agents see flight availability and pricing for various major airlines. Three decades ago, when CRS’s were largely owned by the various airlines, some airlines favored their own flights. For example, when a travel agent searched for flights through Apollo, a CRS then owned by United Airlines, United flights would come up first – even if other carriers offered lower prices or nonstop service. The Department of Justice intervened, culminating in rules prohibiting any CRS owned by an airline from ordering listings “us[ing] any factors directly or indirectly relating to carrier identity” (14 CFR 255.4). Certainly one could argue that these rules were an undue intrusion: A travel agent was always free to find a different CRS, and further additional searches could have uncovered alternative flights. Yet most travel agents hesitated to switch CRS’s, and extra searches would be both time-consuming and error-prone. Prohibiting biased listings was the better approach.

The same principle applies in the context of web search. On this theory, Google ought not rank results by any metric that distinctively favors Google. I credit that web search considers myriad web sites – far more than the number of airlines, flights, or fares. And I credit that web search considers more attributes of each web page – not just airfare price, transit time, and number of stops. But these differences only grant a search engine more room to innovate. These differences don’t change the underlying reasoning, so compelling in the CRS context, that a system provider must not design its rules to systematically put itself first.

The analogy is a superficially attractive one, and we’re tempted to entertain it, so far as it goes.  Organizational questions inhere in both settings, and similarly so: both flights and search results must be ordinally ranked, and before CRS regulation, a host airline’s flights often appeared before those of rival airlines.  Indeed, we will take Edelman’s analogy at face value.  Problematically for Professor Edelman and others pushing the CRS-style remedy, a fuller exploration of CRS regulation reveals this market intervention – well, put simply, wasn’t so successful after all.  Not for consumers anyway.  It did, however, generate (economically) predictable consequences: reduced consumer welfare through reduced innovation. Let’s explore the consequences of Edelman’s analogy further below the fold.

Continue Reading…

In antitrust, economics, federal trade commission, google, international center for law & economics, monopolization, technology , , ,
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Competition in the Evolving Digital Marketplace–Congressional Hearing

Geoffrey Manne —  15 September 2010

I will be testifying tomorrow before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy on competition in the digital marketplace.  My testimony won’t be surprising to readers of this blog–in fact some of it was lifted directly from blog posts that have appeared here.  Also on the panel are Richard Feinstein from the FTC, Edward Black from CCIA, Morgan Reed from ACT, Scott Cleland from Precursor LLP and Mark Cooper from the Consumer Federation of America.

For some reason the links to written testimony on the House website don’t seem to be working, but my testimony is available here.

A taste for those who prefer not to devour the whole thing:

In brief, given the link between innovation and economic growth, the stakes of “getting it right” are high.  Caution and humility are warranted in light of both the historical hostility towards innovative business practices by competition policy as well as the large gaps of empirically-validated theory in the economic literature on competition and innovation.  The traditional problem of identifying and distinguishing pro-competitive from anticompetitive conduct faced by enforcers and courts in all antitrust cases is a difficult one.  But those difficulties are exacerbated in innovative industries.

Both product and business innovations involve novel practices, and such practices generally result in monopoly explanations from the economics profession followed by hostility from the courts (though sometimes in reverse order) and then a subsequent, more nuanced economic understanding of the business practice usually recognizing its pro-competitive virtues.  This sequence and outcome is exactly what one might expect in a world where economists’ career incentives skew in favor of generating models that demonstrate inefficiencies and debunk the economics status quo, while defendants engaged in business practices that have evolved over time through trial and error have a difficult time articulating a justification that fits one of a court’s checklist of acceptable answers.  In the words of Nobel economist Ronald Coase,

[i]f an economist finds something—a business practice of one sort or another—that he does not understand, he looks for a monopoly explanation.  And as in this field we are rather ignorant, the number of un-understandable practices tends to be rather large, and the reliance on monopoly explanations frequent.”

From an error-cost perspective, the critical point is that antitrust scrutiny of innovation and innovative business practices is likely to be biased in the direction of assigning higher likelihood that a given practice is anticompetitive than the subsequent literature and evidence will ultimately suggest is reasonable or accurate.

I look forward to mixing it up again with Scott Cleland.  Last time we met it was over similar issues (specifically revolving around Google), and the audio of that event is available here.

In antitrust, google, international center for law & economics, law and economics, privacy, technology , , , , , ,
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Intel Settlement Watch Part II

Josh Wright —  29 July 2010

While Intel Corporation nears its settlement deadline with the Federal Trade Commission, it received good news from a federal district court in Delaware evaluating the evidence of alleged consumer harm from the discounts Intel offers to buyers.  It is also very important to note that this pass from a US court applying standards of consumer harm embedded in US Section 2 case law — that is, actual harm to consumers and the competitive process rather than allowing harm to competitors to serve as a sufficient condition for proof of the former — is the first to evaluate the consumer welfare effects of Intel’s conduct from this more rigorous perspective.  One has to wonder whether this ruling will shift settlement negotiations in favor of Intel.   Its true that the FTC can use Section 5 to evade this Section 2 competitive effects analysis.  But not without eventually testing their interpretation of Section 5 in front of a panel at the D.C. Circuit.

From today’s WSJ:

Intel Corp. won a key ruling in a suit against the company on behalf of computer buyers, which found no evidence that consumers have been hurt by the company’s discounting practices in the market for computer chips. …

The case had proceeded in parallel with a private antitrust suit brought in June 2005 by Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which Intel agreed to settle in November along with a $1.25 billion payment to AMD. Both cases alleged that Intel used improper discounts and other tactics to deter computer makers from buying microprocessor chips from AMD, with the proposed class-action case focusing on alleged harm to consumers from Intel’s behavior.

Intel’s tactics have also been challenged by antitrust agencies on three continents, including a suit by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that is in settlement negotiations. Throughout the process, Intel has denied wrongdoing and argued that its discounting practices represented a lawful form of competition that has helped bring PC prices down.

Special Master Vincent Poppiti appeared to give support to that argument. In a 112-page opinion, he wrote that PC makers had discretion about how to use Intel discounts. In some cases, he wrote, they passed the benefits on to consumers in the form of lower prices—undercutting the idea that all members of the proposed class of consumers suffered a “common impact” from Intel’s action. Mr. Poppiti based his conclusions on what he called the “unreliable analyses” of an expert witness for the plaintiffs, who argued that consumers had been overcharged as a result of Intel’s tactics.

I’ve not read Special Master Poppiti’s analysis.  However, as readers of TOTM will know, I’ve been very critical of the Federal Trade Commission’s Complaint against Intel primarily on two grounds: (1)  the wobbly intellectual underpinnings of the Commission’s attempt to expand its FTC Act Section 5 authority to evade (see also here) the more stringent monopolization standards under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, and (2) that the economic merits of the Commission’s anticompetitive theory are questionable when laid against the available data.  Poppiti’s analysis, as reported, appears to be consistent with the second line of attack.

For more analysis of both, please see, An Antitrust Analysis of the Federal Trade Commission’s Complaint Against Intel, combines these two themes.  The paper will be released as the first installment of the International Center for Law and Economics Antitrust & Competition Policy White Paper Series.  The paper considers the economic merits of the Commission’s anticompetitive theory, evaluates the testable implications of that theory against the available data, and offers a critique of the Commission’s proffered justifications for the Section 5 allegations.

Here is the abstract:

The Federal Trade Commission’s recent complaint targets the Intel Corporation for antitrust scrutiny under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act and Section 2 of the Sherman Act. The Commission alleges that, through the use of loyalty discounts offered to microprocessor purchasers, Intel unlawfully excluded rivals and harmed consumers in the microprocessor and graphics processor markets. This article analyzes the Commission’s claims. The Commission’s reliance on Section 5 should be viewed with suspicion because it allows the Commission to evade the more stringent standards of proof that have been emerged in the Supreme Court’s Section 2 jurisprudence. Furthermore, the Commission’s actions surrounding its prosecution of Intel reflect an adversarial attitude that undermines the Commission’s stated comparative advantages over private litigants. Moreover, the Commission’s allegations form a weak case when evaluated under the conventional Section 2 standard. Unlike many Section 2 cases alleging speculative future consumer harm, the disputed conduct in this case has been in the marketplace for nearly a decade, and its competitive footprint is readily observable. The available data do not support the Commission’s theory that Intel’s behavior harmed consumers. To the contrary, it is almost certain that Intel’s distribution contracts led to tangible, demonstrable consumer welfare gains in the form of lower prices. Accordingly, the Commission’s complaint against Intel threatens to harm consumers directly in the computer industry as well as indirectly by undermining the stability and certainly which longstanding Section 2 jurisprudence has afforded the business community by requiring the plaintiffs offer rigorous proof of competitive harm.

Readers might also be interested in TOTM guest-blogger Dan Crane and Herbert Hovenkamp on the FTC’s case against Intel.

In antitrust, economics, federal trade commission, international center for law & economics, legal scholarship, patent, technology
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An Antitrust Analysis of the Federal Trade Commission’s Complaint Against Intel

Josh Wright —  15 June 2010

As readers of TOTM know, I’ve been critical of both the Federal Trade Commission’s Complaint against Intel from a consumer welfare perspective as well as the wobbly intellectual underpinnings of the Commission’s attempt to expand its FTC Act Section 5 authority to evade (see also here) the more stringent monopolization standards under Section 2 of the Sherman Act.

The paper I’ve posted to SSRN today, An Antitrust Analysis of the Federal Trade Commission’s Complaint Against Intel, combines these two themes.  The paper will be released as the first installment of the International Center for Law and Economics Antitrust & Competition Policy White Paper Series.  The paper considers the economic merits of the Commission’s anticompetitive theory, evaluates the testable implications of that theory against the available data, and offers a critique of the Commission’s proffered justifications for the Section 5 allegations.

Here is the abstract:

The Federal Trade Commission’s recent complaint targets the Intel Corporation for antitrust scrutiny under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act and Section 2 of the Sherman Act. The Commission alleges that, through the use of loyalty discounts offered to microprocessor purchasers, Intel unlawfully excluded rivals and harmed consumers in the microprocessor and graphics processor markets. This article analyzes the Commission’s claims. The Commission’s reliance on Section 5 should be viewed with suspicion because it allows the Commission to evade the more stringent standards of proof that have been emerged in the Supreme Court’s Section 2 jurisprudence. Furthermore, the Commission’s actions surrounding its prosecution of Intel reflect an adversarial attitude that undermines the Commission’s stated comparative advantages over private litigants. Moreover, the Commission’s allegations form a weak case when evaluated under the conventional Section 2 standard. Unlike many Section 2 cases alleging speculative future consumer harm, the disputed conduct in this case has been in the marketplace for nearly a decade, and its competitive footprint is readily observable. The available data do not support the Commission’s theory that Intel’s behavior harmed consumers. To the contrary, it is almost certain that Intel’s distribution contracts led to tangible, demonstrable consumer welfare gains in the form of lower prices. Accordingly, the Commission’s complaint against Intel threatens to harm consumers directly in the computer industry as well as indirectly by undermining the stability and certainly which longstanding Section 2 jurisprudence has afforded the business community by requiring the plaintiffs offer rigorous proof of competitive harm.

Download it here.

In antitrust, economics, federal trade commission, international center for law & economics, technology
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Congratulations to ICLE Research Fellow Judd Stone

Josh Wright —  8 June 2010

Congratulations to International Center for Law and Economics Research Fellow — also my former George Mason law student, long-time research assistant, and now co-author — and Northwestern University School of Law graduate, Judd Stone.  Judd somehow managed to finish his 3L year at Northwestern Law with with a “perfect” semester involving 5 A+’s in 5 classes, turning in a whopping 4.18 cumulative G.P.A. (!) while working part-time for ICLE and producing a draft of an article we plan to submit to law reviews this fall on the wobbly theoretical foundations of the application of behavioral economics to antitrust.  Geoff and I are incredibly pleased to have Judd on board as our Research Fellow before he heads off to clerk for Justice Daniel E. Winfree of the  Supreme Court of Alaska in Fall 2010, followed by a clerkship with Judge Edith Jones on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In announcements, international center for law & economics
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The Economics and Regulation of Payment Card Interchange Fees: Paper and Conference

Geoffrey Manne —  8 June 2010

Two related items from ICLE:

As regular readers know, interchange fees are a frequent topic of conversation around the blog.  Taking the conversation from the ether to the real world, ICLE has funded a white paper and is putting on a conference next week on the topic.  The conference, in fact, grows out of the successful online symposium we held here at Truth on the Market a few months ago.  An e-book/pdf version of the posts and comments from that sympoisum can be downloaded here, by the way.  A few of the participants from the symposium will be participating in the conference, as well (more below).

The paper, by Todd Zywicki (ICLE Senior Fellow and Foundation Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law), is entitled, “The Economics of Payment Card Interchange Fees and the Limits of Regulation.”

The timing of the paper’s release couldn’t be more fortuitous, as Congress reconvenes next week and begins to confer over the language of the Durbin Amendment to the “Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010.”  The Durbin Amendment would impose price controls on debit card interchange fees and would restrict the use by credit and debit card networks of certain network rules.  As Todd described it recently in a Washington Times op-ed:

Late in the Senate’s proceedings on the financial regulatory reform bill, the Senate adopted – with no hearings and minimal debate – a controversial provision proposed by Sen. Richard Durbin, Illinois Democrat, that imposes price controls on interchange fees for debit and prepaid cards. The amendment also allows merchants to override several rules of payment card networks that currently protect consumers from abusive practicesby merchants. While big-box merchants and convenience stores are declaring this a victory against the financial services industry, if the amendment survives in conference committee, consumers and small banks will be the real losers.

The paper, although focused most heavily on credit card interchange fees (and the attendant complexity of credit card markets more generally) has important implications for the debate over the Durbin Amendment.  As the paper’s abstract explains:

Fresh off of the most substantial national liquidity crisis of the last generation and the enactment of sweeping credit card regulation in the form of the Credit CARD Act, Congress continues to deliberate, with a continuing drumbeat of support from lobbyists, a set of new regulations for credit card companies. These proposals, offered in the name of consumer protection, seek to constrain the setting of “interchange fees”—transaction charges integral to payment card systems—through a range of proposed political interventions. This article identifies both the theoretical and actual failings of such regulation. Payment cards are a secure, inexpensive, welfare-increasing payment mechanism largely unlike any other in history. Rather than increasing consumer welfare in any meaningful sense, interchange fee legislation represents an attempt by some merchants to shift costs away from their businesses and onto card issuing banks and cardholders. In particular, bank-issued credit cards offer a dramatic improvement in the efficiency and availability of consumer credit by shifting credit risk from merchants onto banks in exchange for the cost of the interchange fee—currently averaging less than 2% of purchase value. Merchants’ efforts to cabin these fees would harm not only consumers but also the merchants themselves as commerce would depend more heavily on less-efficient paper-based payment systems. The consequence of interchange fee legislation, as Australia’s experiment with such regulation demonstrates, would be reduced access to credit, higher interest rates for consumers, and the return of the much-loathed annual fee for credit cards. Interchange fee regulation threatens to constrain credit for consumers and small businesses as the American economy begins to convalesce from a serious “credit crunch,” and should be accordingly rejected.

The paper presents a detailed analysis of the economics of payment card networks and the implications for the various participants in those networks–from consumers to banks to merchants, among others–of political intervention into the setting of the interchange fee.

Please click on the link to download the paper:

Todd J. Zywicki, “The Economics of Payment Card Interchange Fees and the Limits of Regulation.”

Coinciding with the release of the paper, ICLE, in conjunction with George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, will be hosting a conference in Washington, DC, next week on the interchange fee debate.  For more information on the conference and to register, please click here.  The conference, to be held on June 9th from 8:30 am to 1:00 pm at the Willard InterContinental Hotel, will cover both the politics and regulation of interchange fees, as well as the underlying economics of card networks and the place of the interchange fee in those networks.

Conference Speakers include:

Thomas Brown, O’Melveny & Myers LLP

Sujit Chakravorti, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Thomas Durkin, Former Senior Economist, Federal Reserve Board

Mike Konczal, Roosevelt Institute

Geoffrey Manne, International Center for Law and Economics

Megan McArdle, Atlantic Monthly

Tim Muris, former Chairman, Federal Trade Commission

Felix Salmon, Reuters

Steven Semeraro, Thomas Jefferson University

Fred Smith, Competitive Enterprise Institute

Joshua Wright, George Mason University Law School and ICLE

Todd Zywicki, George Mason University Law School, Mercatus and ICLE

We hope to see you there

In announcements, business, consumer protection, credit cards, economics, financial regulation, interchange and credit cards symposium, international center for law & economics, law and economics, markets, personal finance, regulation, scholarship
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A first principles approach to antitrust enforcement in the agricultural industry

Geoffrey Manne —  30 April 2010

Like Mike, we also have a short article in the latest issue of the CPI Antitrust Chronicle.  Also available on SSRN, for those without a CPI subscription.

Here’s our stab at an abstract:

There are very few industries that can attract the attention of Congress, multiple federal and state agencies, consumer groups, economists, antitrust lawyers, the business community, farmers, ranchers, and academics as the agriculture workshops have.  Of course, with intense interest from stakeholders comes intense pressure from potential winners and losers in the political process, heated disagreement over how gains from trade should be distributed among various stakeholders, and certainly a variety of competing views over the correct approach to competition policy in agriculture markets.  These pressures have the potential to distract antitrust analysis from its core mission: protecting competition and consumer welfare.  While imperfect, the economic approach to antitrust that has generated remarkable improvements in outcomes over the last fifty years has rejected simplistic and misleading notions that antitrust is meant to protect “small dealers and worthy men” or to fulfill non-economic objectives; that market concentration is a predictor of market performance; or that competition policy and intellectual property cannot peacefully co-exist.  Unfortunately, in the run-up to and during the workshops much of the policy rhetoric encouraged adopting these outdated antitrust approaches, especially ones that would favor one group of stakeholders over another rather than protecting the competitive process. In this essay, we argue that a first principles approach to antitrust analysis is required to guarantee the benefits of competition in the agricultural sector, and discuss three fundamental principles of modern antitrust that, at times, appear to be given short-shrift in the recent debate.

In antitrust, business, contracts, intellectual property, international center for law & economics, law and economics, markets, politics, regulation, technology , , , , , , , ,
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Sykuta and Manne: Covering the Agricultural Antitrust Workshop in Iowa [#agworkshop]

Geoffrey Manne —  12 March 2010

UPDATE:  Trying to find the right hash tag for the event, I’ve changed the title of this post and we’ll follow the convention for our live blogging today–posts from the Workshop will all have “#agworkshop” in the title.

Later this week Mike Sykuta and I will be winging our way to Iowa on behalf of the ICLE to attend the first of the year-long series of DOJ/USDA Workshops on Agriculture and Antitrust Enforcement Issues.  You can find the agenda for the first workshop, to be held Friday, March 12 in Ankeny, Iowa, here.  Intrepid reporters, we, our plan is to “live blog” the event for those of you unable to attend.  This first workshop, in addition to introducing the series, will focus on farming, which means seeds, which means the dispute between DuPont and Monsanto over licensing terms and everyone’s perennial favorite: industry concentration.

The agenda clearly reflects the highly-politicized nature of the issues under discussion, and, for example, a few news reports have suggested that the agenda has changed in response to pressure from Iowa Senator Tom Harkin.  Regardless, we expect a lively and interesting discussion.

For ease of reference all of our blogs from the workshop will be categorized under “ag/antitrust workshop,” and each post will have “DOJ/USDA Workshop” in the title.

TOTM is no stranger to the issues, and Mike and I have blogged a few times about the antitrust/licensing issues involved.  See:

Competition in Agriculture Redux (Manne, Kieff and Wright)

Competition in Agriculture (Sykuta)

Monsanto’s Licensing Case Victory (Manne)

Yet More Evidence Against the DOJ’s Antitrust Plantings (Sykuta)

The Seeds of an Antitrust Disaster (Manne)

DOJ Disconnect: Do We Really Need a Roadshow? (Sykuta)

Together with Scott Kieff and Joshua Wright, we also submitted a comment to the DOJ on the topic, “Comment on Intellectual Property, Concentration and the Limits of Antitrust in the Biotech Seed Industry,” available here (SSRN) or here (if you prefer to get it directly from the DOJ website).

The news has also been covering the seed industry antitrust issues, the DOJ/USDA workshops and agricultural antitrust issues more generally, and you can find a host of relevant news articles here.

We’re looking forward to the workshops and to your comments on the day’s events.

In ag/antitrust workshop, announcements, antitrust, blogging, international center for law & economics, markets, politics, technology , , , ,
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Interchange Fees Symposium E-Book

Geoffrey Manne —  21 February 2010

iclelogoOver at the International Center for Law and Economics website we’ve posted a link to a pdf e-book version of the collected content (including both posts and comments) from our recent “Interchange Fees and the Law and Economics of Credit Cards” symposium.  Head on over and download a copy if you’re interested in a dead tree version of the symposium.

In announcements, blogging, credit cards, economics, interchange and credit cards symposium, international center for law & economics, law and economics , , , ,
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