Showing archive for: “Consumer Welfare Standard”
The DMA Meets the Rule of Law
The European Union’s Digital Markets Act was built to move fast: designate gatekeepers, impose obligations, and reshape digital markets before the lawyers can finish sharpening their pencils. But in Meta Platforms Ireland v. Commission, the General Court offered a useful reminder: even Europe’s new digital rulebook still has to pass through an old-fashioned door marked ... The DMA Meets the Rule of Law
How China Accidentally Made Consumer Welfare Cool Again
The consumer welfare standard was supposed to be on the defensive. After nearly a decade of attacks from the neo-Brandeisian movement, critics had cast it as too narrow, too technocratic, and too forgiving of “Big Tech.” Yet the standard’s most important new ally may turn out to be an unexpected one: geopolitics. The consumer welfare ... How China Accidentally Made Consumer Welfare Cool Again
The Bundle of All Fears: India’s Risky War on Integration
Good intentions make for lousy competition law when they are stapled to bad economics. That is the trouble with the new fashion in digital regulation: It treats integration as suspicion, product design as coercion, and innovation as something firms may pursue only after regulators decide it is sufficiently tidy. The European Union’s Digital Markets Act ... The Bundle of All Fears: India’s Risky War on Integration
Antitrust at the Agencies: National Nanny Hangover Edition
The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) rulemaking machinery is humming again. Is it being tuned for optimal performance—or revved for another trip into the ditch? Most of the current action has to do with consumer protection. That’s par for the course, really. Apart from issuing the ill-fated noncompete rule, since vacated—comments here if anyone wants a ... Antitrust at the Agencies: National Nanny Hangover Edition
The Exit Door Theory of Consumer Finance
Consumer protection often begins with a simple question: Can the consumer walk away? If the answer is no—because switching is hard, data are locked up, markets are fragmented, or new competitors cannot enter—then the problem is not just weak consumer protection. It is weak competition. That is the frame for a deceptively basic question: How ... The Exit Door Theory of Consumer Finance
Competitiveness Without the Cronyism
Big mergers are back in fashion. So are “national champions,” industrial-policy wish lists, and solemn warnings that antitrust enforcement may leave the West defenseless against foreign rivals. In Washington, Brussels, and London, competition policy increasingly sounds less like economics and more like geopolitical strategy. That trend creates a real risk of confusion. Antitrust is not ... Competitiveness Without the Cronyism
Before Brazil Scrubs In: The Case Against Digital-Market Surgery
Brazil’s digital markets do not need a regulatory savior so much as a careful doctor. Bill 4,675/2025 arrives with the bedside manner of a reform, but the instruments of major surgery: a new bureaucracy, decade-long designations, and open-ended obligations for firms deemed systemically important. Before Congress scrubs in, it should ask whether the patient is ... Before Brazil Scrubs In: The Case Against Digital-Market Surgery
AI, Antitrust, and the Mirage of Data Dominance
Not all supposed barriers to entry are created equal. The ones that matter for antitrust are not just costs, advantages, or inputs controlled by leading firms. They are durable impediments that keep rivals from entering, expanding, and disciplining market power. That distinction matters in generative artificial intelligence (AI), where policymakers increasingly worry that control over ... AI, Antitrust, and the Mirage of Data Dominance
From Competition to Exclusion: Can Discounts Go Too Far?
When does a discount cross the line from competition to exclusion? That question now sits before a federal district court weighing the U.S. Justice Department’s (DOJ) antitrust case against Visa Inc. and its debit-card business, where Visa holds a 60% share. In the waning days of the Biden administration, on Sept. 24, 2024, the DOJ ... From Competition to Exclusion: Can Discounts Go Too Far?
Brussels’ AI Squeeze: Regulating What It Leaves Standing
Brussels has boxed itself into a familiar corner: first limit how a platform can make money, then regulate what is left. The European Commission’s case against Meta over WhatsApp is a near-perfect illustration. On April 15, the European Commission sent Meta a Supplementary Statement of Objections. It signaled its intent to order the company to ... Brussels’ AI Squeeze: Regulating What It Leaves Standing
The Nanny State Goes Shopping
Antitrust used to ask a simple question: are firms making consumers worse off? Increasingly, it asks a different one: are consumers making the “wrong” choices? The consumer welfare standard (CWS) often draws criticism as narrow or inattentive to broader concerns. That familiar critique rests on a basic misunderstanding of what the standard is designed to ... The Nanny State Goes Shopping
California Dreamin’ or an Antitrust Nightmare?
California is about to run a live-fire experiment in antitrust—and the working hypothesis appears to be that decades of case law and economic learning were optional. In January, I published a short post—“Rewriting Antitrust, California Style”—that touched on the inner workings (machinations?) of the California Law Review Commission (CLRC). I flagged concerns about the staff’s ... California Dreamin’ or an Antitrust Nightmare?
