Amazon-Whole Foods After One Year Symposium

One year ago tomorrow the Amazon/Whole Foods merger closed, following its approval by the FTC. The merger was something of a flashpoint in the growing populist antitrust movement, raising some interesting questions — and a host of objections from a number of scholars, advocates, journalists, antitrust experts, and others who voiced a range of possible problematic outcomes.

Under settled antitrust law — evolved over the last century-plus — the merger between Amazon and Whole Foods was largely uncontroversial. But the size and scope of Amazon’s operation and ambition has given some pause. And despite the apparent inapplicability of antitrust law to the array of populist concerns about large tech companies, advocates nonetheless contend that antitrust should be altered to deal with new threats posed by companies like Amazon.

For something of a primer on the antitrust debate surrounding Amazon, listen to ICLE’s Geoffrey Manne and Open Markets’ Lina Khan on Season 2 Episode 1 of Briefly, a podcast produced by the University of Chicago Law Review.  

On August 28, Truth on the Market and the International Center for Law & Economics hosted a blog symposium discussing the impact of the merger.

One year on, we asked antitrust scholars and other experts to consider:

  • What has been the significance of the Amazon/Whole Foods merger?
  • How has the merger affected various markets and the participants within them (e.g., grocery stores, food delivery services, online retailers, workers, grocery suppliers, etc.)?
  • What, if anything, does the merger and its aftermath tell us about current antitrust doctrine and our understanding of platform markets?
  • Has a year of experience borne out any of the objections to the merger?
  • Have the market changes since the merger undermined or reinforced the populist antitrust arguments regarding this or other conduct?

We lined up an outstanding and diverse group of scholars to discuss these issues.

Participants

Symposium Posts (in order of posting)