Ajit Pai

The Trump FCC Can’t and Shouldn’t Be the Internet Speech Police

The debate over whether Section 230 needs to be updated is an important one. But the proper venue for that debate is...

One Year After the Net Neutrality Repeal: the FCC Has Abdicated Its Role Protecting Consumers and Competition

Every promise made by broadband providers and every reason cited by the FCC in its decision to eliminate the net neutrality rules has proven...

Editors’ Briefing: This Week in Political Economy (June 8–16)

The AT&T-Time Warner merger is approved, further fueling the media merger frenzy and providing the Second Gilded Age with “another layer of gold”; net...

Editors’ Briefing: On Our Radar This Week (Feb. 10–Feb. 17)

This week in political economy. Yesterday's New York Times editorial: “The terror that has gripped their elected officials … is fear of the wealthy gun...

Editors’ Briefing: On Our Radar This Week (Dec. 9–Dec. 16)

This week in political economy.      House and Senate Republicans released the final version of their tax bill late Friday afternoon. The Washington Post breaks...

Will Repeal of Net Neutrality Accelerate the Trend in Media Consolidation? The History of Cable Suggests "Yes"

The history of cable and cable programming strongly suggests that without specific FCC safeguards, we can expect a massive “arms race” by providers to...

Editors’ Briefing: On Our Radar This Week (Nov. 27–Dec. 2)

The stories that most interested us this week.         The Senate approved the Republican tax bill last night following a series of last-minute amendments, paving the way...

LATEST NEWS

Revising Guideline 6 With Evidence To Establish a Structural Inference for Input Foreclosure

Vertical merger law lacks the structural presumption of horizontal merger law, which shifts the burden from the government to the merging parties to provide evidence that a merger will not produce anticompetitive effects when it is known that the merger will substantially increase market concentration. To improve Guideline 6 of the draft Merger Guidelines concerning vertical foreclosure, Steven Salop develops a three-factor criteria with which the government antitrust agencies can show an analogous structural “inference” that shifts the burden of evidence to the merging parties.

How US Antitrust Enforcement Against Xerox Promoted Innovation by Japanese Competitors

Xerox invented modern copier technology and was so successful that its brand name became a verb. In 1972, U.S. antitrust authorities charged Xerox with monopolization and eventually ordered the licensing of all its copier-related patents. As new research by Robin Mamrak shows, this antitrust intervention promoted subsequent innovation in the copier industry, but only among Japanese competitors. Nevertheless, their innovations benefited U.S. consumers.

Revising the Merger Guidelines To Return Antitrust to a Sound Economic and Legal Foundation

The draft Merger Guidelines largely replace the consumer welfare standard of the Chicago School with the lessening of competition principle found in the 1914 Clayton Act. This shift would enable the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division to utilize the full extent of modern economics to respond to rising concentration and its harmful effects, writes John Kwoka.

How Anthony Downs’s Analysis Explains Rational Voters’ Preferences for Populism

In new research, Cyril Hédoin and Alexandre Chirat use the rational-choice theory of economist Anthony Downs to explain how populism rationally arises to challenge established institutions of liberal democracy.

The Impact of Large Institutional Investors on Innovation Is Not as Positive as One Might Expect

In a new paper, Bing Guo, Dennis C. Hutschenreiter, David Pérez-Castrillo, and Anna Toldrà-Simats study how large institutional investors impact firm innovation. The authors find that large institutional investors encourage internal research and development but discourage firm acquisitions that would add patents and knowledge to their firms’ portfolios, hampering overall innovation.