To Whom It May Concern: Please Stop Calling RPM Agreements Cartels (or Price-Fixing)
The headline of this Bloomberg story on the Swiss Competition Authority’s complaint against Bayer, Pfizer and Lilly announces that the firms operated an “Erection Drug Cartel.” I read a bit further to learn something about what I suspected, from the title of the story, would be a horizontal agreement between the firms — that is ... To Whom It May Concern: Please Stop Calling RPM Agreements Cartels (or Price-Fixing)
O'Hara and Ribstein's The Law Market
You can now purchase it in hard copy, or on Kindle, and follow the action at the Conglomerate Book Club in March. I’ll be starting it on my Kindle on an airplane this afternoon.
Sirius-XM Merger Retrospective…
It looks like Sirius-XM is now contemplating bankruptcy (HT: Danny Sokol). There were quite a few critics of the Bush administration’s decision not to challenge the merger. Various antitrust commentators and critics (as well as rivals like the NAB) lined up on the side of enforcement, arguing that the merger would lead to a monopoly ... Sirius-XM Merger Retrospective…
Becker and Murphy on the Stimulus
I’ve got the over-under on Krugman name-calling directed at both set at noon EST tomorrow. Any takers? Anyway, here’s some key excerpts from the WSJ piece: In a full-employment situation, increased government spending would largely replace private spending, so the net stimulus to GDP would likely be quite small. In the present environment, however, with ... Becker and Murphy on the Stimulus
Robert Barro Talks Stimulus
Here’s the link. Its an accessible read. Here’s a few key question (in bold) and answers: Do you read Paul Krugman’s blog? Just when he writes nasty individual comments that people forward. Oh, well he wrote a series of posts saying he thought the World War II spending evidence was not good, for a variety ... Robert Barro Talks Stimulus
"One thing is clear to me: the orthodox and unvarnished Chicago School of economic theory is on life support, if it is not dead"
More settling economic debates by declaration and without regard to the evidence. When you make declarations like this it is best to do your homework. Consider the following: The Post-Chicago theoretical advances are well known to be built upon the foundation laid by Chicago School founders like Aaron Director — it is simply misleading to ... "One thing is clear to me: the orthodox and unvarnished Chicago School of economic theory is on life support, if it is not dead"
The Boss Settles It
Is the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger anticompetitive? Does it present an opportunity to test whether the DOJ will adopt the evasion of constraint theory of monopolization which I’ve criticized? These are academic questions. The matter has been settled by the Boss: A final point for now: the one thing that would make the current ticket situation ... The Boss Settles It
A Different Form of Competition
A DC area blog reader sends the following update on Inova’s successful attempts to forestall entry in Northern Virginia: The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors voted yesterday to reject a proposal by HCA Virginia to build a hospital in Loudoun, capping more than five years of fierce debate over how best to meet the rising ... A Different Form of Competition
More Evasion of Pricing Constraints as Antitrust Violations: Vertical Merger Edition
I’ve criticized elsewhere what appears to the the FTC’s new “evasion of pricing constraint” theory of monopolization emerging from Ovation (see also here), N-Data, and Rambus. I expressed some concern that this theory had no limiting principles and was detached in important ways from sound economics: Here are a few examples of conduct the FTC ... More Evasion of Pricing Constraints as Antitrust Violations: Vertical Merger Edition
Zaring on the Panic of 1907
With an antitrust angle to boot: The Panic of 1907, published last year by Robert Bruner and Sean Carr, is a good blow by blow account of the action stations nature of a financial crisis, in this case one that began with a freezing of the credit markets, blew up with an ill-timed effort to ... Zaring on the Panic of 1907
Seriously, Alpha = 0? Have You Read the Bill?
Not to harp on the same point over and over, but can anybody look at this list from the stimulus package with a straight face and claim that the absence of inefficient government spending (HT: Peter Klein)? $1 billion for Amtrak $2 billion for child-care subsidies $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts ... Seriously, Alpha = 0? Have You Read the Bill?
Alpha = 0?
Geoff’s post about Kevin Murphy’s recent slides and analytical framework for thinking about the stimulus are worth reading and if you haven’t yet. Here’s a link to the video. Here’s Murphy’s analysis in a nutshell for those who haven’t: A Framework for Thinking about the Stimulus Package Let G = increase in government spending 1-a= ... Alpha = 0?
