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.

Market Power Has Grown and Antitrust Needs Strengthening, Despite What Shapiro & Yurukoglu and Miller Suggest

Jonathan B. Baker and Fiona Scott Morton challenge the interpretations of two new papers from Carl Shapiro & Ali Yurukoglu and Nathan Miller, which question economy-wide trends toward a rise in market power and, if any such trend has occurred, that it is due to lax antitrust enforcement.

Antitrust Enforcers Must Act Now To Ensure the Google Search Case Delivers on Its Promise

Fiona Scott Morton and David Dinielli show how landmark antitrust cases historically have cleared the path for innovation in the next “frontier technology.” But with closing arguments in the search monopoly case just days away, Google threatens to evade this round of rigorous new competition. It reportedly is in talks to place its own artificial intelligence tool on Apple devices as it did in the case of search. Such a maneuver would entrench Google’s search monopoly and place Google in the driver’s seat to steer the development of consumer-facing AI. The authors offer up a menu of steps the government might take now to thwart Google’s new anticompetitive strategy and preserve competition in AI before it’s too late.

At Stake in the Apple Case Is Foregone and Future Innovation

Fiona Scott Morton provides her initial thoughts on the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Apple, how it compares to current and past tech cases, and the arguments she anticipates each side will make.

What We Learn About the Behavioral Economics of Defaults From the Google Search Monopolization Case

At the heart of the United States Google Search case is the monopolizing effect of Google securing for its own search offering the status of default search engine on a web browser, such as Safari, Chrome, or Firefox. The authors review the behavioral economics and empirical evidence of this effect and suggest several conduct and structural remedies to open up the search market to competition.

The New and Improved 2023 Merger Guidelines

The final version of the Agencies’ Merger Guidelines are a thoughtful improvement over the draft version, writes Fiona Scott Morton. Both the economic and legal analysis in the final version promise to more effectively prevent harmful mergers and bring U.S. antitrust into the modern age.

What Antitrust Experts Want You to Know About the Amazon Trial

In late September, the United States Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon for using a set of anticompetitive strategies to maintain its monopoly in the online retail market. ProMarket asked four antitrust experts —two economists and two law professors —to discuss the foundations and strength of the complaint’s arguments, the history of similar cases, and the potential for a legal remedy.

Split the Legal, Economic and Policy Arguments of the Draft Merger Guidelines

To support the Agencies’ goals of stronger antitrust enforcement, Fiona Scott Morton recommends breaking the draft Merger Guidelines into three documents that clarify the Guidelines’ legal and economic justifications and overarching goals and priorities.

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 to evaluate...

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 do better...

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 US with...

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