Commentary

Google’s Calls for DOJ Antitrust Head Jonathan Kanter’s Recusal Are Baseless

Kanter’s pre-existing commitment to aggressive antitrust enforcement, far from compromising the legitimacy of his actions, reinforces his qualifications for doing the job of Assistant...

The Ties that Bind Workers to Firms: No-Poach Agreements, Noncompetes, and Other Ways Firms Create and Exercise Labor Market Power

Collusive no-poach agreements are per se illegal, but noncompete clauses are not. Recent research casts doubt on the rationale for this legal distinction and...

This Proposal Could Inadvertently Improve Corporate Accounting

A provision within the Biden administration’s Build Back Better bill that assesses a minimum tax on certain companies based on their income reported to...

The Sherman Act and Abuse of Dominance in the Age of Networks

In order to be more effective in networked markets, the US should adopt a version of the EU’s “abuse of dominance” standard that could...

Towards a More Complete Understanding of Market Power and Consumer Harm in Antitrust Law

Antitrust law currently tends to disregard non-consumer harms and the potential influence of companies on policymaking. A new paper explores how antitrust law can...

Populism at the FTC Upsets the Antitrust Religion of Consumer Welfare: A Reply to Sokol and Wickelgren

Institutional change, on any fundamental level, will have those that seek to defend the status quo up in arms. But in order to effectively...

Facebook’s Responses to Criticism Sound Too Good to Be True

The Facebook Papers show how Facebook’s relentlessly positive and defiant PR messaging is not plausible anymore. Hence, a rebrand. It sounds too good to be...

How Big Data Fuels Big Tech’s Anticompetitive Conduct and Gatekeeping Power

Achieving a truly open internet is only possible through robust online competition free from the control of today’s digital gatekeepers like Facebook and Google....

Missing the Forest for the Trees: A Reply to Hovenkamp and Shapiro

The Federal Trade Commission’s now-abandoned 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines were not some ideal economic document that the FTC foolishly disregarded; rather, they failed spectacularly...

How Will the FTC Evaluate Vertical Mergers?

The Federal Trade Commission’s recent withdrawal of its 2020 vertical merger guidelines is flatly incorrect as a matter of microeconomic theory and is contrary...

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