Antitrust and Competition
A key distinction in economic viewpoints that goes oft-unnoticed is between pro-business and pro-market. A good bellwether to where someone stands on the pro-business/market continuum is his/her stance on antitrust policy: pro-business usually favors incumbents, while pro-market calls for aggressive antitrust enforcement to facilitate competition. “I would not dispute that even a monopoly-ridden market would be preferable to any economic system trying to operate without any kind of a market. But given the prevalence or the danger of substantial intrusion of monopoly into the market, the logic of the laissez faire defense of the market against state-intervention collapses and there is called for instead, by its very logic, state-suppression or state-regulation of monopoly practices, which one may wish to call, as Henry Simons called it, an instance of "positive laissez faire" or, as I prefer, as an instance of deliberate departure from laissez faire.” Jacob Viner - The Intellectual History of Laissez Faire (1960)
Antitrust and Competition
“The President’s Executive Order is Pro‑Market and Anti‑Abusive Market Power”
Ten days after the White House issued an executive order and a brief that highlights growing concentration and decreasing competition in the US economy,...
Antitrust and Competition
The White House Acknowledges: The U.S. Has a Concentration Problem; President Obama Launches New Pro-Competition Initiative
President Barack Obama issues an executive order that calls on federal government agencies to promote competition within uncompetitive markets.
President Barack Obama launched a broad new...
Antitrust and Competition
Stigler Center Talk: Bo Rothstein on What Makes Scandinavian Countries Non-Corrupt
Oxford’s Bo Rothstein, one of the most influential political scientists in the world today, will discuss the historical experience of Scandinavian countries in eradicating...
Antitrust and Competition
“What We Have is Capture of the Regulators’ Minds, A Much More Sophisticated Form of Capture Than Putting Money in Their Pockets”
Barry C. Lynn, author and director of New America’s Open Markets program, explains how every major industry and marketplace in America came to be controlled...
Antitrust and Competition
Millennials Believe in Free Markets and Want a Scandinavian Welfare State
Millennials may view socialism more favorably than their parents, but their definition of socialism is very different than that of previous generations.
Millennials may view...
Antitrust and Competition
Why This Blog?
There is an issue that– while extremely important today–receives little attention not only in the traditional media but also in the blogosphere, and academia:...
Latest news
Antitrust and Competition
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.
Commentary
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.
Antitrust and Competition
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...
Antitrust and Competition
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.
Antitrust and Competition
The Future Markets Model Explains Meta/Within: A Reply to Herb Hovenkamp
In response to both Herb Hovenkamp’s February 27 article in ProMarket and, perhaps more importantly, also to Hovenkamp’s highly regarded treatise, Lawrence B. Landman, first, shows that the Future Markets Model explains the court’s decision in Meta/Within. Since Meta was not even trying to make a future product, the court correctly found that Meta would not enter the Future Market. Second, the Future Markets Model is the analytical tool which Hovenkamp says the enforcers lack when they try to protect competition to innovate.
Book Excerpts
The Chicago Boys and the Chilean Neoliberal Project
In a new book, The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism, Sebastian Edwards details the history of neoliberalism in Chile over the past seventy years. The Chicago Boys—a group of Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago through the U.S. State Department’s “Chile Project”—played a central role in neoliberalism’s ascent during General Augusto Pinochet’s rule. What follows is an excerpt from the book on University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman’s 1975 visit to Chile to meet with Pinochet and business leaders.
Antitrust and Competition
Creating a Modern Antitrust Welfare Standard that Integrates Post-Chicago and Neo-Brandeisian Goals
Darren Bush, Mark Glick, and Gabriel A. Lozada argue that the Consumer Welfare Standard is inconsistent with modern welfare economics and that a modern approach to antitrust could integrate traditional Congressional goals as advocated by the Neo-Brandesians. Such an approach could be the basis for an alliance between the post-Chicago economists and the Neo-Brandesians.
