News

American communities have begun to reject the construction of local data centers out of concern that they drive up electricity prices without returning durable and diversified job and other economic benefits. Jake Higdon writes that governments concerned about these risks should not only insulate consumers from higher prices, but also demand that data center investments be used to power reindustrialization efforts.

Matt Lucky reviews Noam Schieber’s Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class, now out at Macmillan.

Artificial intelligence will change the market for economic consultants, likely reducing overall demand and shifting workers to current clients’ in-house units. However, both consulting firms and clients are still studying how to deploy AI, and there may yet be new opportunities for consultants as AI changes the broader economy, write Mona Birjandi and Mery Zadeh.

Ratib Ali analyzes whether a merger between United and American Airlines would pass merger review according to the 2023 Merger Guidelines and finds that under multiple market definitions, it would substantially lessen competition.

Hannah Pittock argues that current analysis of reverse acquihires misses the core conceptual debate over antitrust’s antiquated treatment of hiring as benign vertical agreements between the laborers (the supplier) and employers (the buyer), in which labor is treated as one input among many.

In new research, Jongkwan Lee, Giovanni Peri, and Hee-Seung Yang assess the effects of a sudden reduction in immigrant workers in South Korea. They find that migrant workers were not easily replaceable by natives, resulting in operational disruptions and firm closures.

The European Union and its member states are quickly updating merger rules to address killer acquisitions and the economics of digital platforms. In a new article published in the Antitrust Law Journal, Anna Tzanaki explores how these endeavors challenge the institutional design of EU merger control and how this design can evolve to tackle new economic and geopolitical problems without forfeiting founding legal principles.

Anthropic has formed an exclusive artificial intelligence consortium to use its general purpose artificial intelligence model, Claude Mythos, to identify and fix vulnerabilities in critical internet and digital infrastructure. Madhavi Singh warns this consortium, called Project Glasswing, could contravene antitrust law and argues for regulatory oversight to ensure that it does not become a front for an illegal cartel.

Trade wars between the United States and Canada have sharply reduced the number of Canadian tourists traveling to the U.S. In new research, André Kurmann, Étienne Lalé, and Julien Martin use novel methods to measure how this decline in tourism has negatively impacted American workers and communities.

The House v. NCAA private antitrust settlement professionalized collegiate sports by requiring colleges and universities to compensate student athletes. The case has changed the economics of college sports, pushing schools to spend big to pay for top athletes to field teams that compete for championships. New research from the Progressive Policy Institute finds that although the new model has narrowed success to the top programs, the ability for schools to pay for success has now been mostly priced in, writes Diana L. Moss.