The Digital Economy

In new research in collaboration with Color of Change, Dante Donati and Lena Song find that comments on social media posts help drive platform engagement for organizations. However, comment sections are often populated by a vocal minority, and adversarial comments from them come with reduced off-platform support for the original posters.

Artificial intelligence coding agents provide enormous value to consumers for very low fees. But the market is quickly shrinking with Anthropic in the lead. Only competition, and requiring Big Tech to build agents rather than buy them, will continue to let AI’s value flow to consumers. As such, the courts should ban SpaceX’s recently proposed acquisition of Cursor, writes Ketan Ahuja.

Victor Jiawei Zhang revisits the 2025 United States ban on TikTok and explores how it represented a case study of how the government led users to act collectively to override network effects and introduce competition to the digital market. The case study highlights research from his new article, “Digital Antitrust Collectivism,” where he explores the possibility that users’ collective power can invigorate digital market competition.

Across three studies, Jana Friedrichsen, Julia Schwarz, and Michel Clement explore how generative AI will change the music industry. They find that while consumers enjoy and even prefer AI-generated music, preferences shift upon learning that the song was AI-generated.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Chinese automotive manufacturers gain a competitive edge through laxer rules governing personal data protection and intellectual property. Oscar Borgogno and Giovanni Veronese argue that ensuring effective compliance with European law could help European manufacturers re-establish a level playing field while upholding EU constitutional values.

India is working on legislating new competition rules to govern artificial intelligence and other tech markets. But recommendations from a recent report by the Competition Commission of India suggest it might revert to old competition standards that will likely prove ineffectual in governing the new AI market, writes Abhineet Nayyar.