Showing archive for: “Monopolization”
Antitrust at the Agencies Roundup: Take My Default … Please! Edition
I can hardly believe it, but I’ve read that a famous old bit by Henny Youngman has been purged from Florida textbooks, apparently because it was deemed offensive to those who wrote, told, and laughed at the joke. I won’t tell it here, but you can look it up. And if you’re a reader of ... Antitrust at the Agencies Roundup: Take My Default … Please! Edition
The FTC Tacks Into the Gale, Battening No Hatches: Part 2
Part 1 of this piece can be found here. Emergence of the ‘Neo-Brandeisians’ Thus, matters unfolded until the curtain began to descend on the second Obama term in 2016. In the midst of presidential primary season, a targeted political challenge to the prevailing economic approach to antitrust first came to light. No one has yet ... The FTC Tacks Into the Gale, Battening No Hatches: Part 2
The FTC Tacks Into the Gale, Battening No Hatches: Part 1
The Evolution of FTC Antitrust Enforcement – Highlights of Its Origins and Major Trends 1910-1914 – Creation and Launch The election of 1912, which led to the creation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), occurred at the apex of the Progressive Era. Since antebellum times, Grover Cleveland had been the only Democrat elected as president. ... The FTC Tacks Into the Gale, Battening No Hatches: Part 1
Are Markups Really SO Bad?
Concentration is a terrible measure of [insert basically anything people actually care about]. Have I said that before? Concentration tells us nothing about market power, efficiency, or whether policy changes can do anything to increase welfare. Economists know that, especially industrial organization (IO) economists. If we want to measure market power for a seller, a better measure is ... Are Markups Really SO Bad?
What Is a Barrier to Entry?
Why do monopolies exist? Many textbooks point to barriers to entry as a cause of monopolies. Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok’s textbook says: “In addition to patents, government regulation and economies of scale, monopolies may be created whenever there is a significant barrier to entry, something that raises the cost to new firms of entering the industry.” ... What Is a Barrier to Entry?
Dynamic Competition Proves There Is No Captive Audience: 10 Years, 10G, and YouTube TV
In Susan Crawford’s 2013 book “Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age,” the Harvard Law School professor argued that the U.S. telecommunications industry had become dominated by a few powerful companies, leading to limited competition and negative consequences for consumers, especially for broadband internet. Crawford’s ire was focused particularly ... Dynamic Competition Proves There Is No Captive Audience: 10 Years, 10G, and YouTube TV
No More Kings? Due Process and Regulation Without Representation Under the UK Competition Bill
What should a competition law for 21st century look like? This point is debated across many jurisdictions. The Digital Markets, Competition, and Consumers Bill (DMCC) would change UK competition law’s approach to large platforms. The bill’s core point is to place the UK Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) Digital Markets Unit (DMU) on a statutory footing with ... No More Kings? Due Process and Regulation Without Representation Under the UK Competition Bill
Untangling the 9th Circuit’s Ruling in Epic Games v Apple
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled late last month on Epic Games’ appeal of the decision rendered in 2021 by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in Epic Games v Apple, affirming in part and reversing in part the district court’s judgment. In the original case, Epic had challenged as a violation ... Untangling the 9th Circuit’s Ruling in Epic Games v Apple
What the European Commission’s More Interventionist Approach to Exclusionary Abuses Could Mean for EU Courts and for U.S. States
The European Commission on March 27 showered the public with a series of documents heralding a new, more interventionist approach to enforce Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which prohibits “abuses of dominance.” This new approach threatens more aggressive, less economically sound enforcement of single-firm conduct in Europe. ... What the European Commission’s More Interventionist Approach to Exclusionary Abuses Could Mean for EU Courts and for U.S. States
Reining in Digital Competition to No Good End: Will AICOA and OAMA Rise from the Grave?
The 117th Congress closed out without a floor vote on either of the major pieces of antitrust legislation introduced in both chambers: the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) and the Open Apps Market Act (OAMA). But it was evident at yesterday’s hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee that at least some ... Reining in Digital Competition to No Good End: Will AICOA and OAMA Rise from the Grave?
No, Mergers Are Not Like ‘The Ultimate Cartel’
There is a line of thinking according to which, without merger-control rules, antitrust law is “incomplete.”[1] Without such a regime, the argument goes, whenever a group of companies faces with the risk of being penalized for cartelizing, they could instead merge and thus “raise prices without any legal consequences.”[2] A few months ago, at a ... No, Mergers Are Not Like ‘The Ultimate Cartel’
Brussels Effect or Brussels Defect: Digital Regulation in Emerging Markets
The blistering pace at which the European Union put forward and adopted the Digital Markets Act (DMA) has attracted the attention of legislators across the globe. In its wake, countries such as South Africa, India, Brazil, and Turkey have all contemplated digital-market regulations inspired by the DMA (and other models of regulation, such as the ... Brussels Effect or Brussels Defect: Digital Regulation in Emerging Markets
