antitrust and competition

Brooke Fox and Walter Frick analyze research and ideas presented at the Stigler Center Antitrust and Competition Conference that question the value of mergers.

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.

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.

This year’s Stigler Center conference on antitrust and competition invited scholars to propose alternatives to the consumer welfare standard.

An exit-inducing vertical merger might reduce welfare even if it is a welfare-enhancing vertical merger absent exit. Therefore, the possibility for rivals’ exit should be incorporated into the guidelines for vertical merger evaluation, write Javier D. Donna and Pedro Pereira in new research.

Tim Wu responds to a recent ProMarket post by Herbert Hovenkamp which argues for the dismissal of the Supreme Court’s 1962 Brown Shoe decision. Wu says that the Court’s duty is to obey and interpret the intentions of laws set by Congress, and cases cannot be dismissed because they don’t align with a particular policy perspective.

The Supreme Court’s 1962 Brown Shoe decision, which found a merger to be anticompetitive even though it would have reduced prices for...

Dominant web services will often incentivize mobile phone carriers to provide their customers access to their services at zero cost to the customer’s data plan, also known as zero-rating. In new research, Bruno Renzetti argues that this behavior can be a form of exclusionary conduct designed to solidify the monopolies of dominant online platforms and services that ultimately harms consumers even if it appears to lower their data costs at first glance.

The Federal Trade Commission recently failed to stop Meta’s acquisition of virtual reality company Within, while the Department of Justice is now...

Many scholars and policymakers have suggested regulating firms’ ability to price discriminate between consumers when they operate in a market prone to...