The Role of the State

John B. Kirkwood writes that the future of Neo-Brandeisian movement must focus on three fronts: refining its approach to the consumer welfare standard, which it initially rejected but then used when in power; continuing to influence the monopolization cases against Big Tech and the Federal Trade Commission’s non-compete rule; and configuring the principles to govern competition in the economy’s next great tech frontier: artificial intelligence.

State occupational-licensing requirements have ballooned over the past decades to cover seemingly nonsensical professions, raising barriers to entry and costs for consumers. Ray Ball, S.P. Kothari, and Andrew Sutherland argue that the current deregulatory movement in the United States should target these regulations next.

The Federal Trade Commission under Chair Andrew Ferguson has surprised many by continuing its predecessor’s emphasis on protecting labor markets. Randy Kim writes that while this is a welcome development, it will do little to help workers if President Donald Trump does not also continue his predecessor’s whole-of-government approach. Early indications suggest he will not.

Big Tech’s monopoly over online discourse threatens democracy. "Middleware" promises a path forward by adding competitive, customizable layers of recommendation algorithms. But can middleware...

Over the past four decades, the United States has seen rising market power, slowing productivity growth, and deepening wealth inequality. In new research, Giammario...

Mark MacCarthy writes that the case law supports Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson’s charge that collaboration by social media companies on content moderation practices would be anticompetitive collusion. However, the author argues that open and transparent cooperation might actually benefit a troubled internet, and Congress should consider carving out a content-neutral antitrust exemption for platforms in the way it has in the past for broadcast networks.

In new research, Carl T. Bogus uses General Electric as a case study to argue that regulators should prohibit companies that have reached a certain size from growing through mergers and acquisitions due to more common inefficiencies and their outsized harms to stakeholders and society.

The new Trump administration’s antitrust leaders are unexpectedly maintaining the Biden administration’s enforcement priorities, including the 2023 Merger Guidelines. Eric Posner explains why this...

Alissa Cooper and Zander Arnao argue that a lack of competition in social media has allowed dominant platforms to design algorithms to maximize for...

Media pluralism is a core democratic value in Europe. Upholding it requires that media concentration is scrutinized beyond its impact on competition in the traditional economic formulation. By addressing the challenges posed by dominant media players and fostering a diverse information ecosystem, Europe aims to uphold media plurality as a democratic value and ensure that citizens can engage in informed decision-making. From this angle, the European approach to protecting media pluralism might offer an interesting comparative  perspective for the United States debate, write Maciej Bernatt and Marta Sznajder.