Allen Grunes
Allen Grunes is a native Hyde Parker who now lives in the suburbs of Washington, DC and works as an antitrust lawyer in the DC office of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. He is the co-author of Big Data and Competition Policy (Oxford University Press 2016) (with Professor Maurice Stucke). He currently serves on the Advisory Boards of the American Antitrust Institute and the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College, a law degree from Rutgers University, and a master of laws degree from New York University. The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own.
Antitrust and Competition
Two New Papers Suggest Antitrust Law is Not Equipped to Address Personalized Pricing and Algorithmic Cartels
Two recent articles by Michal Gal and Ramsi Woodcock look at pricing algorithms and consumer harm. Both identify potential nightmare scenarios and...
Antitrust and Competition
Of Antitrust and Patents: the Quiet Return of the Status Quo at the DOJ’s Antitrust Division
Without Senate-confirmed political leadership, the Department of Justice quietly reverts to an Obama-era policy that favors Big Tech.
Antitrust and Competition
What the Biden DOJ Can Learn From the Clinton and Obama Years on How to Tackle America’s Monopoly ProblemÂ
The Clinton DOJ attacked international cartels. The Obama DOJ prioritized merger enforcement. The Biden DOJ needs to focus on America’s monopoly problem.
Latest news
Antitrust and Competition
Creation over Time in Copyright and Patent
On May 18, the United States Supreme Court decided two intellectual property cases with two seemingly different results. A closer look, however, reveals a complimentary concern with the monopolistic power of first movers and how the legal system should enable innovation from second movers over time, writes Randy Picker.
Event Notes
ESG Standards’ Good, Bad and Ugly
The Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State hosted a virtual event discussing the standards, metrics and disclosures of investments focused on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals. The following is a transcript of the event.
Commentary
Reregulate.
Lee Hepner and William J. McGee respond to Clifford Winston’s ProMarket piece asserting that further deregulation of the airline industry would resolve problems in the industry. Instead, the authors claim a return to regulation would produce better results for travelers.
Antitrust and Competition
A World With Far Fewer Mergers
Brooke Fox and Walter Frick analyze research and ideas presented at the Stigler Center Antitrust and Competition Conference that question the value of mergers.
Commentary
The Banking Risks of Central Bank Digital Currencies
The implementation of central bank digital currencies as the primary medium of exchange would exacerbate the flaws of our current fiat system which encourage banks to overextend credit and create liabilities that they cannot redeem. This will worsen the already recurring cycles of financial crises, writes Vibhu Vikramaditya.
Antitrust and Competition
The Whig History of the Merger Guidelines
A pervasive "Whig" view of United States antitrust history among scholars and practitioners celebrates the Merger Guidelines' implementation of increasingly sophisticated economic methods since their...
Antitrust and Competition
Algorithmic Collusion in the Housing Market
While the development of artificial intelligence has led to efficient business strategies, such as dynamic pricing, this new technology is vulnerable to collusion and consumer harm when companies share the same software through a central platform. Gabriele Bortolotti highlights the importance of antitrust enforcement in this domain for the second article in our series, using as a case study the RealPage class action lawsuit in the Seattle housing market.
