Big Tech

Is It Better to Address the Apple-Google App Store Duopoly Through Antitrust or Regulation? 

A new paper analyzes antitrust investigations and private litigation initiated against the Google and Apple app stores, exploring how the main anticompetitive...

Why Competition Alone Won’t Bring About a More Inclusive Digital Economy

The current reforms being debated in the US and Europe to tackle the challenges posed by tech giants tend to see more...

How to Prevent Big Tech From Hindering Pathbreaking Innovation in the Metaverse

The transition to the metaverse presents a technological paradigm shift akin to the shift from desktop computers to smartphones, but today’s dominant...

Designing Better Antitrust Remedies for the Digital World

Even when antitrust enforcers and courts get it right when finding an anticompetitive infringement, they constantly end up imposing remedies that are...

How Big Media Handed Digital Advertising to Big Tech

The current structure of digital advertising markets makes the Google-Facebook duopoly an unavoidable trading partner for every party in the content consumption...

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...

How the Free Software and the IP Wars of the 1990s and 2000s Presaged Today’s Toxic, Concentrated Internet

How did the internet evolve from a relatively decentralized, hybrid, and democratizing space toward a concentrated, privatized environment controlled by a handful...

How Apple Locks Out the Competition with Its Digital Key

Apple’s efforts to dominate the contactless payments market and lock up the “digital key” space pose a profound threat to consumer privacy...

Frances Haugen’s Leaking of the Facebook Papers Will Hurt Decision-Making at Tech Companies

Despite Mark Zuckerberg’s assurances that Facebook will continue its research program, it seems almost inevitable that the company will narrow the scale and scope...

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.

Latest news

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.

ESG Standards’ Good, Bad and Ugly

The Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State hosted a virtual event discussing the standards, metrics and disclosures of investments focused on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals. The following is a transcript of the event.

Reregulate.

Lee Hepner and William J. McGee respond to Clifford Winston’s ProMarket piece asserting that further deregulation of the airline industry would resolve problems in the industry. Instead, the authors claim a return to regulation would produce better results for travelers.

A World With Far Fewer Mergers

Brooke Fox and Walter Frick analyze research and ideas presented at the Stigler Center Antitrust and Competition Conference that question the value of mergers.

The Banking Risks of Central Bank Digital Currencies

The implementation of central bank digital currencies as the primary medium of exchange would exacerbate the flaws of our current fiat system which encourage banks to overextend credit and create liabilities that they cannot redeem. This will worsen the already recurring cycles of financial crises, writes Vibhu Vikramaditya.

The Whig History of the Merger Guidelines

A pervasive "Whig" view of United States antitrust history among scholars and practitioners celebrates the Merger Guidelines' implementation of increasingly sophisticated economic methods since their...

Algorithmic Collusion in the Housing Market

While the development of artificial intelligence has led to efficient business strategies, such as dynamic pricing, this new technology is vulnerable to collusion and consumer harm when companies share the same software through a central platform. Gabriele Bortolotti highlights the importance of antitrust enforcement in this domain for the second article in our series, using as a case study the RealPage class action lawsuit in the Seattle housing market.