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Commentary

An outlet for insiders to speak freely (as they remain anonymous to the reader) on what they perceive as problematic practices in their own industry – with an emphasis on how the industry tweaks the rules of the game and captures regulation.
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice.” Adam Smith – An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)

Antitrust and Competition

A Better Way To Use Ecosystems in Antitrust Analysis

Konstantinos Stylianou
Ecosystem analysis has been a popular but ill-defined concept in antitrust to identify digital products and services that operate across multiple markets. In new research, Konstantinos Stylianou and Bruno Carballa-Smichowski provide a schematic for defining ecosystems to help courts and regulators pursue more sophisticated investigations and interventions into increasingly complicated markets.
Antitrust and Competition

The False Choice between Digital Regulation and Innovation

Anu Bradford
In Europe, many regulatory authorities are debating whether to loosen regulations on tech companies so that they can catch up with their counterparts in the United States and close Europe’s innovation gap. Based on her recent article, Anu Bradford shows that this choice is a false one. She argues that rather than stringent regulation, the gap in tech innovation between the U.S. and EU can be explained by differences in their scaling opportunities, capital markets, bankruptcy laws, immigration policy, and flexibility of their labor markets.
Antitrust and Competition

Moderation Is the Cure to the Crisis in Antitrust Expertise

Barak Orbach
After several decades of obscurity, antitrust reemerged as a fashionable force in the second and third decades of the 21st century. This trend coincided with growing societal distrust of expertise. Barak Orbach explores assertions that corruption and greed drive support for lax antitrust enforcement policies, and that trustbusting zeal is a marker of intellectual integrity. He argues that intellectual integrity and sound public policy require the moderate, technocratic approaches that society heavily discounts.
Commentary

The U.S. Must Drive Forward on EVs, Not Back Up

Susan Helper
Recent negative news on the production of electric vehicles in the United States call into question the government’s industrial policy boosting Detroit’s efforts to go green. Susan Helper writes that not only have there been significant benefits from President Joe Biden’s industrial policies, but promoting the production and adoption of electric vehicles remains essential to achieving national decarbonization targets and increasing resilience, innovation, and national security
Antitrust and Competition

Multi-Market Balancing in a New Antitrust Paradigm

Randy Stutz
Randy Stutz writes that the Biden administration has recalibrated antirust policy by devoting more equal enforcement attention to competition in buyers’ markets and sellers’ markets, thereby promoting the welfare of both suppliers and consumers. The shift raises questions about whether courts should engage in “multi-market balancing”—the weighing of harms in one market against benefits in a different market—when the interests of suppliers and consumers diverge.
Antitrust and Competition

The Ruling Against American Airlines-JetBlue Provides a Chance To Reform Antitrust’s Rule of Reason

Herbert Hovenkamp
Herbert Hovenkamp writes that the First Court’s recent ruling against American Airlines and JetBlue for coordinating operations in New York City and Boston exemplifies the correct application of antitrust’s rule of reason, which has troubled courts and plaintiffs and led to underenforcement for decades.
Commentary

The Political Economy of Fertility

Matthew Lucky
Stigler Center Assistant Director of Programs Matthew Lucky traces the history of ideas about population growth and its relation to welfare from Malthusian concerns of a population bomb to contemporary studies correlating declining birth rates in developed countries with increased investments in human capital and GDP per capita. Scholars now debate what it means for a society to have populations that do not simply stop growing, but rapidly shrink.
Antitrust and Competition

Can the FTC’s PBM Complaint Create a Competitive Pharmaceutical Marketplace?

Fiona Scott Morton
Fiona Scott Morton reviews the merits of the Federal Trade Commission’s complaint against the three largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) for suppressing competition in pharmaceutical markets. Although the complaint’s alleged harms are narrow, it is a welcome start that promises to shed light on the PBM’s expansive anticompetitive practices and ultimately lower drug prices for Americans.
Antitrust and Competition

The EU’s Next Competition Commissioner Must Set Out Her Vision for Change

Max von Thun
Competition policy in the European Union is moving toward a new phase. Max von Thun parses ideas from two recent documents outlining the future of competition in the EU—a report from former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and a “Mission Letter” from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen—to understand what questions competition chief Margrethe Vestager’s appointed replacement, Teresa Ribera, must address as she lays out her own vision for the future of competition policy in the EU.
Academic Capture

There’s More Bias Than You Think

Maurice E. Stucke
Conflicts of interest are a serious problem in scholarship. Transparency and discounting, while necessary, are insufficient to protect the marketplace of ideas. Why?  Founder effects and dilution of expertise, explain Maurice E. Stucke and R. Alexander Bentley. To protect the integrity of academia, we must also encourage the injection and consideration of new and contradictory unconflicted ideas.
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ProMarket is dedicated to discussing how competition tends to be subverted by special interests. The posts represent the opinions of their writers, not necessarily those of the University of Chicago, the Booth School of Business, or its faculty. For more information, please visit ProMarket Policy.