The Digital Economy

How Google and Facebook Made Digital Advertising Markets Increasingly Opaque to Protect Their Dominance

According to the British Competition and Markets Authority, barriers to entry are so high that not even Amazon is a real threat to Google...

The Trump Administration Attacks the Stigler Report on Digital Platforms

President Trump’s 2020 Economic Report finally confronts the issue of antitrust enforcement both in the traditional economy and in the digital one....

Facebook’s Enduring Control Over Social Media Markets

According to the British Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Facebook accounts for 75 percent of the UK’s social media market. Over the past 10 years,...

The Chicken/Egg Problem With Google Search That Prevents Competition

Google controls the British search market, according to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority. Its 90 percent market share and profits from general search are...

Google’s and Facebook’s Grip on Digital Advertising Markets

Since July 2019, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority has been conducting an extensive investigation of the digital advertising market. In its preliminary report on...

How to Regulate Digital Platforms: A Database

Over the past couple of years, many antitrust authorities commissioned expert groups or released working papers addressing different areas of digital policy. For the...

“We Were Naïve,” Says FCC Chair Who Oversaw the Creation of Section 230

In an interview with ProMarket, former FCC chair Reed Hundt spoke about antitrust, Big Tech platforms, the future of the 1996 provision that provided legal protection...

Presenting: The Stigler Center’s Report on How to Rein in Big Tech

The Stigler Center presents its policy suggestions on how to address the political and economic issues raised by the market power of tech platforms...

How to Protect Competition and Consumers in Digital Markets

While some markets may self-correct, rapid self-correction in markets dominated by large digital platforms is unlikely. The economy and market structure subcommittee of the...

How to Address the Privacy and Security Challenges Posed by Big Tech

The idiosyncrasies of the American approach to regulation have left the world’s largest economy ill-equipped to protect consumers and guide firms when it comes...

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.