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Showing results for:  “digital markets act”

Comments on Updating the Merger Guidelines

Of course, the Merger Guidelines need to be updated.  Except for efficiencies, they haven’t been updated in 17 years.   Lawyers and economists with a regular antitrust practice may not require an update in light of their knowledge of the 2006 Commentary, speeches and agency experience.  But, the rest of the antitrust world does.  The most ... Comments on Updating the Merger Guidelines

A bright spot in the bleak financial industry regulatory firmament

Between the various power grabs and dubious regulatory proposals (each more dubious than the last!) from the likes of Geithner, Bernanke, Frank (.pdf), Dodd, etc., etc. you’d be excused for thinking the financial news from Washington (remember when financial news used to come from New York?) was all bad and growing only worse. But there ... A bright spot in the bleak financial industry regulatory firmament

Revisiting Two Classics as the New Semester Begins

Last Friday was the first day of my Business Organizations class. We began with two articles that have profoundly influenced my thinking about the world in general and the business world in particular. To inaugurate the new semester, I thought I’d take a moment and pay tribute to the insights in those articles (and solicit ... Revisiting Two Classics as the New Semester Begins

Using the Hypothetical Monopolist Test to Define the Relevant Market for Ad Tech

Policymakers’ recent focus on how Big Tech should be treated under antitrust law has been accompanied by claims that companies like Facebook and Google hold dominant positions in various “markets.” Notwithstanding the tendency to conflate whether a firm is large with whether it hold a dominant position, we must first answer the question most of ... Using the Hypothetical Monopolist Test to Define the Relevant Market for Ad Tech

CPI Webinar: Economic and Legal Analysis of Collusion

Competition Policy International has announced its next Webinar, featuring Professors Bajari and Abrantes-Metz on the economic and legal analysis of collusion.  I’ve had a blast doing these lectures the last couple of weeks teaching Antitrust Economics 101, and will be finishing up the third lecture this week (after covering basic demand side and supply side ... CPI Webinar: Economic and Legal Analysis of Collusion

Knowledge, Decisions, and Noncompetes

One of my favorite books is Thomas Sowell’s Knowledge and Decisions, in which he builds on Friedrich Hayek’s insight that knowledge is dispersed throughout society. Hayek’s insight that markets can bring dispersed but important knowledge to bear with substantial effectiveness is one that many of us, especially economists, pay lip service to, but it often ... Knowledge, Decisions, and Noncompetes

Larry Ribstein on The Future of Legal Education

What will legal education be like in the significantly deregulated world I’ve predicted in prior posts? I gave some thought to this question in my recent paper, Practicing Theory. There I pointed out that law schools, and particularly law faculty, have benefited from the same regulation that has benefited lawyers.  Although lawyers now complain that ... Larry Ribstein on The Future of Legal Education

F Cubed and jurisdictional competition

The Supreme Court, per Scalia, opined yesterday in Morrison v. National Australia Bank that foreign plaintiffs who transacted in foreign shares on a foreign exchange (hence, “f cubed”) could not bring a 10b-5 action. Margaret Sachs has a good analysis on the Glom. I want to emphasize one important and generally overlooked aspect of the ... F Cubed and jurisdictional competition

2011 Illinois Corporate Colloquium: Shadab on credit risk transfer

The 2011 Illinois Corporate Colloquium got off to a good start with Houman Shadab presenting his paper, The Good, the Bad, and the Savvy: Credit Risk Transfer Governance.  Here’s the abstract: Goldman Sachs and AIG on the eve of the 2008 financial crisis were bound together through a web of credit risk transfer (CRT) contracts ... 2011 Illinois Corporate Colloquium: Shadab on credit risk transfer

Patents and mergers

How should patents be taken into consideration in merger analysis? When does the combining of patent portfolios lead to anticompetitive concerns? Two principles should guide these inquiries. First, as the Supreme Court held in its 2006 decision Independent Ink, ownership of a patent does not confer market power. This ruling came in the context of ... Patents and mergers

Antitrust Karma, the Microsoft-Google Wars, and a Question for Rick Rule

The WSJ recently published the next installment of the Microsoft-Google antitrust wars.  A Google representative argues “competition is one click away”; Charles (“Rick”) Rule, Microsoft’s antitrust attorney, argues that Google’s conduct might harm competition.  Rule’s main point is summed up in the first line of his piece: “what goes around comes around.”  The longer version ... Antitrust Karma, the Microsoft-Google Wars, and a Question for Rick Rule

What’s next for the pharmaceutical industry?

On November 9, pharmaceutical stocks soared as Donald Trump’s election victory eased concerns about government intervention in drug pricing. Shares of Pfizer rose 8.5%, Allergan PLC was up 8%, and biotech Celgene jumped 10.4%. Drug distributors also gained, with McKesson up 6.4% and Express Scripts climbing 3.4%. Throughout the campaign, Clinton had vowed to take on ... What’s next for the pharmaceutical industry?