How to Profit From a Cartel Without Joining One
Adam Smith warned that people in the same trade rarely meet without the conversation turning to a scheme to raise prices. Antitrust enforcers on both sides of the Atlantic now suspect they can skip the meeting—a shared shareholder may do the job. In May 2025, the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ... How to Profit From a Cartel Without Joining One
We Measured Europe’s Browser Revolution. Bring a Magnifying Glass.
Europe’s browser revolution appears to have left most browsers exactly where it found them. The European Commission is celebrating a “surge” in alternatives. The browsing data suggest a ripple. In April, the Commission reviewed the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and pronounced it “fit for purpose.” “Alternative browsers and search engines are being increasingly chosen by ... We Measured Europe’s Browser Revolution. Bring a Magnifying Glass.
The Garden State’s War on the Good Deal
New Jersey lawmakers have found a way to spare small grocers the sting of missing out on a discount: make suppliers think twice about offering one to anybody. If a cereal maker gives Walmart a better deal than a corner market in Newark, a bill before the state’s General Assembly would require the supplier to ... The Garden State’s War on the Good Deal
Paramount’s Mission: Impossible Antitrust Case
Hollywood loves a sequel, and the antitrust fight over Paramount Skydance’s proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) is becoming one. First came the familiar streaming-monopoly scare. Now comes the more personal version: the writers, drivers, and actors who make the movies fear that a combined studio will need far fewer of them—and ... Paramount’s Mission: Impossible Antitrust Case
The AI Jobs Panic Comes to Sacramento
California has seen the future of work, and Sacramento’s first instinct is to convene 14 task forces about it. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Executive Order N-6-26 today, setting California’s workforce agencies in motion on directives involving research reviews, revisions to the state’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, studies of new safety-net programs, a ... The AI Jobs Panic Comes to Sacramento
Turning Down the Thinking: A Law & Economics Trilogue on AI Throttling
Three section leads at the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) read the same viral GitHub post and reached three different conclusions. Call it a trilogue—three views, one problem, and a technology that refuses to sit still. The GitHub issue filed last week against Anthropic’s Claude Code product carried a blunt title: “Claude Code ... Turning Down the Thinking: A Law & Economics Trilogue on AI Throttling
Canada’s Merger Guidelines: Size on Trial
Canada is on the verge of hard-coding costly mistakes into its merger policy. The Competition Bureau’s proposed merger guidelines aim to translate Parliament’s recent overhaul of the Competition Act into enforcement practice. The draft instead risks entrenching a merger regime that treats market structure as destiny, discounts consumer-benefiting efficiencies, and substitutes blunt presumptions for evidence ... Canada’s Merger Guidelines: Size on Trial
Discretion Without Guardrails: Canada’s Competition Experiment
When competition authorities expand their legal toolkits, the most consequential policy choices often do not appear in the statute. They emerge later—in enforcement guidelines, presumptions, and priorities that determine how aggressively agencies will deploy new powers. Canada now finds itself squarely in that phase. Recent amendments to the Competition Act illustrate the shift. Reforms enacted ... Discretion Without Guardrails: Canada’s Competition Experiment
Streaming Market Shares: Error 404, Data Not Found
No matter who acquires Warner Bros. Discovery, whether it’s ultimately Netflix or Paramount Skydance, the deal will be one of the largest media mergers in history. Yet antitrust authorities reviewing these transactions face an unusual obstacle: they cannot reliably calculate market shares for the streaming services at the heart of the proposed deals. The standard ... Streaming Market Shares: Error 404, Data Not Found
Rules Down, Rockets Up: The Year Telecom Policy Hit Reset
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) have had a busy year on numerous fronts, but perhaps none more important than their work on broadband deployment and adoption. At the FCC, Chairman Brendan Carr made his “Build America” agenda a key agency priority, while the NTIA implemented a variety of ... Rules Down, Rockets Up: The Year Telecom Policy Hit Reset
NPU: Political Economy Without Economics
It appears that a new branch has forked off from the “hipster” neo-Brandeisian approach toward regulation, which styles itself as the study of “networks, platforms, and utilities” (NPU). Beginning with the 2022 publication of the “Networks, Platforms, and Utilities: Law and Policy” casebook by Morgan Ricks, Ganesh Sitaraman, Shelley Welton, and Lev Menand, NPU has ... NPU: Political Economy Without Economics
Metrics, Markets, and Merger Scrutiny: A Netflix-WBD Combination
This morning’s announced merger between Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) would create a global media company of unprecedented scale. The transaction will also almost certainly attract scrutiny from antitrust regulators—most likely the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) Antitrust Division, rather than the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The deal would offer a direct test of the ... Metrics, Markets, and Merger Scrutiny: A Netflix-WBD Combination
