Showing results for: “digital markets act”
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
Wanna Keep This Economic Mess to a Minimum? Honor Contracts.
New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera insists that current economic conditions call for courts to ignore carefully negotiated contracts between sophisticated business entities. Arguing that Dow Chemical Company should be free to walk away from its agreement to buy specialty chemical manufacturer Rohm & Haas, Mr. Nocera contends that “maybe, just maybe, deals that ... Wanna Keep This Economic Mess to a Minimum? Honor Contracts.
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
Why oh why can't we have a better Paul Krugman?
Krugman’s latest opinion piece is here. Like me, Paul is beating the same drum over and over (oh, and by the way, like at DeLong’s place, my comments mysteriously don’t show up on his blog. Odd. I swear I am civil and engaged. I’m not sure why I am blacklisted. Could it be that I ... Why oh why can't we have a better Paul Krugman?
"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"
More Hayek (and Buchanan), Less Keynes
Dick Armey has a nice op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal. The piece, titled Washington Could Use Less Keynes and More Hayek, echoes points I made recently in criticizing the stimulus and advising President Obama on good stuff to read. Armey writes: Sound money policy, [Hayek argued], allowed the disparate knowledge of millions of economic ... More Hayek (and Buchanan), Less Keynes
Does this count as socialism? Maybe it’s fascism.
Oh, those monikers always confuse me. So much seems to hang on the right label. When does government intervention in the economy become so extreme that it is appropriate to label it socialist? Here at TOTM we’ve had this discussion before. But these labels are unhelpful–what matters is the economic effect of regulation. Call it ... Does this count as socialism? Maybe it’s fascism.
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
