Randy Picker

Randy C. Picker is the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School.

Randy Picker: A Brief for the Public?

Randy Picker provides his round-two comments on the draft Merger Guidelines.

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.

The FTC’s Non-Compete Ban Will Force Questions Over the Scope of its Authority

To understand why a proposed rule could spark a Supreme Court battle over the Federal Trade Commission’s powers to regulate the American...

How Would the Big Tech Self-Preferencing Bill Affect Users? 

The Senate looks to be nearing a vote on the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which would prohibit gatekeeping digital platforms...

The House’s Recent Spate of Antitrust Bills Would Change Big Tech as We Know It

If enacted, the five bills that were introduced in the House this month would represent the most dramatic statutory changes to US...

Europe Lacks a Vision for How Apple’s App Store Fees Should Work

The European Commission believes that Apple is violating European competition laws and raising prices for consumers in how it operates its App...

Forcing Interoperability on Tech Platforms Would Be Difficult to Do

Governments around the world seem to be on a path to turn the leading tech firms into public utilities. Interoperability is likely...

Reviewing Facebook’s Mergers Could Have Negative Ripple Effects

How the pre-merger notification regime came about and why we should be careful about discouraging useful mergers.

Kicking Around Section 230: Don’t Confuse Politics and Policymaking

Congressional hearings may make for good TV and viral social media posts, but reforming Section 230 would be more difficult than it...

Latest news

Uninhibited Campaign Donations Risks Creating Oligarchy

In new research, Valentino Larcinese and Alberto Parmigiani find that the 1986 Reagan tax cuts led to greater campaign spending from wealthy individuals, who benefited the most from this policy. The authors argue that a very permissive system of political finance, combined with the erosion of tax progressivity, created the conditions for the mutual reinforcement of economic and political disparities. The result was an inequality spiral hardly compatible with democratic ideals.

Did the Meme Stock Revolution Actually Change Anything?

Many financial commentators thought that the surge of retail investors participating in the stock market, the most notable of whom boosted “meme stocks” like GameStop, would democratize corporate governance and improve prosocial firm behavior, including the promotion of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. In new research, Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, and Yoon-Ho Alex Lee find evidence that the exact opposite took place.

The Kroger-Albertsons Merger Will Not Help Grocery Competition

Kroger and Albertsons say they need to merge to compete with Walmart. Claire Kelloway argues that what they really want is Walmart’s monopsony power, and permitting mergers on these grounds will only harm suppliers, workers, and consumers.

Innovators Respond to Their Presidential Candidate Winning With More Innovation

Does an inventor’s political identity influence their productivity? In a new paper, Joseph Engelberg, Runjing Lu, William Mullins, and Richard Townsend examine the impacts of the 2008 and 2016 United States presidential elections on Democrat and Republican inventors, with a particular focus on the quantity and quality of patents after the country elects a new president.

Letter to the Editor: Former FTC and DOJ Chief Economists Urge Separation of Economic and Legal Analysis in Merger Guidelines

Seventeen former chief economists of the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice Antitrust Division urge current Agency heads to separate the legal and economic analysis in the draft Merger Guidelines to strengthen the role of the latter in merger review.

Why the Kroger-Albertsons Merger Is a Mess for Consumers

Grocers Kroger and Albertsons want to merge, which would make them the second biggest retail food chain and, according to them, enhance their ability to compete with Walmart and Costco and offer lower prices to consumers. Christine P. Bartholomew writes that the promises of more competition and lower prices for consumers are unlikely to manifest, and thus the Federal Trade Commission should block the deal.  

After Neoliberalism

The following is an excerpt from Martin Daunton's new book, "The Economic Government of the World: 1933-2023," out November 14.