Fiona Scott Morton

Fiona M. Scott Morton is the Theodore Nierenberg Professor of Economics at the Yale University School of Management. Her area of academic research is empirical industrial organization, with a focus on empirical studies of competition. Her published articles range widely across industries, from magazines, to shipping, to pharmaceuticals, to internet retailing, and are published in leading economics journals. From 2011-12 Professor Scott Morton served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economics at the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where she helped enforce the nation’s antitrust laws. At Yale SOM she teaches courses in the area of competitive strategy. She served as Associate Dean from 2007-10 and has won the School’s teaching award twice.

The Life of Antitrust’s Consumer Welfare Model

“Consumer welfare” as an objective of antitrust law and regulation has its origins in several vague and even conflicting ideas of how...

Fighting New Antitrust Rules Is a Bad Move for Big Tech

With new limits on platforms taking effect in the EU and U.S. politicians showing greater willingness to defy tech titans, companies would...

Why Congress Should Pass the American Innovation and Choice Online Act

The bill, which is the Senate is expected to vote on soon, would improve competition, increase innovation, benefit consumers, and provide the...

How Europe Can Enforce the Digital Markets Act Effectively 

As the European Commission gets ready to embark on the complicated task of implementing the recently agreed-upon Digital Market Act, which would...

What Economists Mean When They Say “Consumer Welfare Standard”

Though coined by academic economists, the term “consumer welfare standard” has been captured and changed by the economic school of thought known...

The Real Dish on the T-Mobile/Sprint Merger: A Disastrous Deal From the Start

The Trump-era DOJ’s decision to allow the T-Mobile/Sprint merger will go down as one of the worst merger-enforcement mistakes in decades. This...

Preventing Drug Shortages and Saving Lives: The Role of Quality and Reliability Standards

Prescription drug shortages have become more common in recent years, interrupting usual medical care and increasing patient risk and system costs, but...

How Will the Digital Markets Act Regulate Big Tech?

While the recently introduced Digital Markets Act rules might change prior to final approval, there is a lot to consider already. What...

Addictive Social Media: Why We Need Regulation and Competition for Digital Platforms

Social media is associated with the prevalence of mood disorders, depression, and anxiety. With no regulations to address the dangers of addictive...

Why a New Digital Authority Is Necessary

A recent Washington Post op-ed claimed that creating a digital authority to regulate Big Tech would be a disaster because of high costs and the...

Latest news

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.

The Future Markets Model Explains Meta/Within: A Reply to Herb Hovenkamp

In response to both Herb Hovenkamp’s February 27 article in ProMarket and, perhaps more importantly, also to Hovenkamp’s highly regarded treatise, Lawrence B. Landman, first, shows that the Future Markets Model explains the court’s decision in Meta/Within. Since Meta was not even trying to make a future product, the court correctly found that Meta would not enter the Future Market. Second, the Future Markets Model is the analytical tool which Hovenkamp says the enforcers lack when they try to protect competition to innovate.

The Chicago Boys and the Chilean Neoliberal Project

In a new book, The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism, Sebastian Edwards details the history of neoliberalism in Chile over the past seventy years. The Chicago Boys—a group of Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago through the U.S. State Department’s “Chile Project”—played a central role in neoliberalism’s ascent during General Augusto Pinochet’s rule. What follows is an excerpt from the book on University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman’s 1975 visit to Chile to meet with Pinochet and business leaders.

Creating a Modern Antitrust Welfare Standard that Integrates Post-Chicago and Neo-Brandeisian Goals

Darren Bush, Mark Glick, and Gabriel A. Lozada argue that the Consumer Welfare Standard  is inconsistent with modern welfare economics and that a modern approach to antitrust could integrate traditional Congressional goals as advocated by the Neo-Brandesians. Such an approach could be the basis for an alliance between the post-Chicago economists and the Neo-Brandesians.

Getting Partisans To Listen to One Another Can Reduce Political Polarization

In new research, Guglielmo Briscese and Michèle Belot find that reminding Americans of shared values can open lines of communication and help reduce political polarization.

The State of The Debate on U.S. Antitrust and Competition

This year’s Stigler Center conference on antitrust and competition invited scholars to propose alternatives to the consumer welfare standard.

The Impact of Algorithms on Competition and Competition Law

Antonio Capobianco, the deputy head of the OECD Competition Division and one of the authors of the 2023 OECD report on algorithmic competition and collusion, explains the risks that algorithms and artificial intelligence pose to competition and how regulators can approach the changing competition paradigm.