Showing results for: “sirius xm merger”
New Paper Reveals “Stealth” Consolidation But Competitive Effects Remain Hidden
Thomas Wollmann has a new paper — “Stealth Consolidation: Evidence from an Amendment to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act” — in American Economic Review: Insights this month. Greg Ip included this research in an article for the WSJ in which he claims that “competition has declined and corporate concentration risen through acquisitions often too small to draw ... New Paper Reveals “Stealth” Consolidation But Competitive Effects Remain Hidden
GDPR After One Year: Costs and Unintended Consequences
GDPR is officially one year old. How have the first 12 months gone? As you can see from the mix of data and anecdotes below, it appears that compliance costs have been astronomical; individual “data rights” have led to unintended consequences; “privacy protection” seems to have undermined market competition; and there have been large unseen ... GDPR After One Year: Costs and Unintended Consequences
Deadweight loss from no monopoly
The once-mighty Blockbuster video chain is now down to a single store, in Bend, Oregon. It appears to be the only video rental store in Bend, aside from those offering “adult” features. Does that make Blockbuster a monopoly? It seems almost silly to ask if the last firm in a dying industry is a monopolist. ... Deadweight loss from no monopoly
What Zoom can tell us about network effects and competition policy in digital markets
Zoom, one of Silicon Valley’s lesser-known unicorns, has just gone public. At the time of writing, its shares are trading at about $65.70, placing the company’s value at $16.84 billion. There are good reasons for this success. According to its Form S-1, Zoom’s revenue rose from about $60 million in 2017 to a projected $330 ... What Zoom can tell us about network effects and competition policy in digital markets
This Too Shall Pass: Unassailable Monopolies That Were, in Hindsight, Eminently Assailable
[N]ew combinations are, as a rule, embodied, as it were, in new firms which generally do not arise out of the old ones but start producing beside them; … in general it is not the owner of stagecoaches who builds railways. – Joseph Schumpeter, January 1934 Elizabeth Warren wants to break up the tech giants ... This Too Shall Pass: Unassailable Monopolies That Were, in Hindsight, Eminently Assailable
Telecom regulators: Don’t get rolled by Rewheel
Will the merger between T-Mobile and Sprint make consumers better or worse off? A central question in the review of this merger—as it is in all merger reviews—is the likely effects that the transaction will have on consumers. In this post, we look at one study that opponents of the merger have been using to ... Telecom regulators: Don’t get rolled by Rewheel
Elizabeth Warren wants to turn the internet into a literal sewer (service)
Near the end of her new proposal to break up Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple, Senator Warren asks, “So what would the Internet look like after all these reforms?” It’s a good question, because, as she herself notes, “Twenty-five years ago, Facebook, Google, and Amazon didn’t exist. Now they are among the most valuable and ... Elizabeth Warren wants to turn the internet into a literal sewer (service)
The DOJ’s Approval of the CVS/Aetna Merger and Vertical Innovation by Incumbents
Last week, the DOJ cleared the merger of CVS Health and Aetna (conditional on Aetna’s divesting its Medicare Part D business), a merger that, as I previously noted at a House Judiciary hearing, “presents a creative effort by two of the most well-informed and successful industry participants to try something new to reform a troubled ... The DOJ’s Approval of the CVS/Aetna Merger and Vertical Innovation by Incumbents
Amazon-Whole Foods symposium wrap-up
On Tuesday, August 28, 2018, Truth on the Market and the International Center for Law and Economics presented a blog symposium — Is Amazon’s Appetite Bottomless? The Whole Foods Merger After One Year — that looked at the concerns surrounding the closing of the Amazon-Whole Foods merger, and how those concerns had played out over ... Amazon-Whole Foods symposium wrap-up
The Amazon-Whole Foods merger: Natural and organic competition in the evolving grocery industry
What actually happened in the year following the merger is nearly the opposite: Competition among grocery stores has been more fierce than ever. “Offline” retailers are expanding — and innovating — to meet Amazon’s challenge, and many of them are booming. Disruption is never neat and tidy, but, in addition to saving Whole Foods from potential oblivion, the merger seems to have lit a fire under the rest of the industry. This result should not be surprising to anyone who understands the nature of the competitive process. But it does highlight an important lesson: competition often comes from unexpected quarters and evolves in unpredictable ways, emerging precisely out of the kinds of adversity opponents of the merger bemoaned.
Whole Foods? Seriously? Why Are We Talking About Whole Foods?
So why this deal, in this symposium, and why now? The best substantive reason I could think of is admittedly one that I personally find important. As I said, I think we should take it much more seriously as a general matter, especially in highly dynamic contexts like Silicon Valley. There has been a history of arguably pre-emptive, market-occupying vertical and conglomerate acquisitions, by big firms of smaller ones that are technologically or otherwise disruptive. The idea is that the big firms sit back and wait as some new market develops in some adjacent sector. When that new market ripens to the point of real promise, the big firm buys some significant incumbent player. The aim is not. just to facilitate its own benevolent, wholesome entry, but to set up hopefully prohibitive challenges to other de novo entrants. Love it or leave it, that theory plausibly characterizes lots and lots of acquisitions in recent decades that secured easy antitrust approval, precisely because they weren’t obviously, presently horizontal. Many people think that is true of some of Amazon’s many acquisitions, like its notoriously aggressive, near-hostile takeover of Diapers.com.
Are the antitrust laws any defense to the real dangers of mega-mergers and big technology power aggregation?
One year ago, Amazon acquired Whole Foods in a $13.7 billion deal. At the time, David Balto, a disciple of current antitrust orthodoxy, wrote: Those who are saying the Amazon-Whole Foods merger is a competition problem are leading us into the jungle without a compass and no clear objective. Antitrust law should stick to protecting consumers and ... Are the antitrust laws any defense to the real dangers of mega-mergers and big technology power aggregation?
