The Role of the State

Matt Lucky reviews Jonathan D. Cohen’s new book, Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling.

In new research, John M. Barrios and Inna Abramova show how private equity’s rising involvement in accounting and other professions is concentrating markets and breaking down barriers to conflicts of interest.

Richard Wolfram explores the regulatory concerns of Netflix and Paramount’s competing merger proposals for Warner Bros. Discovery. Based on current antitrust doctrine and guidelines, Paramount would appear to face comparatively fewer barriers to the transaction, but the analysis is hardly black-and-white.

In new research, Sureyya Burcu Avci, Cindy Schipani, and H. Nejat Seyhun assess and justify the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s failed attempts to regulate potential fraud and deception in the private equity market by examining the performance and potential conflicts-of-interest in de-SPAC transactions.

Matt Lucky reviews Dani Rodrik’s new book, “Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World: A New Economics for the Middle Class, the Global Poor, and Our Climate”

Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater recently gave a speech repudiating the laissez-faire antitrust enforcement policy of past administrations. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has ordered antitrust agencies to investigate how price-fixing has raised food prices. If the administration is serious about bringing food prices down for Americans, it should begin by addressing the costs farmers face. For that reason, Slater should investigate and possibly challenge the mergers between large seed sellers that occurred during Trump’s first term in office, writes Peter Carstensen.

Alexandros Kazimirov discusses how Nvidia’s quasi-merger with Groq resembles a familiar pattern of regulatory evasion that Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have adopted with emerging artificial intelligence companies. He notes that his proposed remedy that was available to antitrust enforcers in the large language model market is not applicable to chip manufacturers like Nvidia.

In recent research, Christian Bergqvist argues that the European Union’s approach to wage-fixing, no-hire, and no-poach agreements reveals a lack of nuance that may end up harming competition.

In new research, Muxin Li and Ksenia Shakhgildyan examine the 2018 “brand gating” agreement between Apple and Amazon and how it impacted competition and consumer welfare on Amazon’s platform.

Robert H. Lande and Mark Glick respond to recent articles by Nancy Rose & Jonathan Sallet and Herbert Hovenkamp debating the role of an...