Apple
How to Converge the US and European Antitrust Approaches Toward Big Tech
The growing consensus that Big Tech platforms need to be restrained creates a unique opportunity for international cooperation among antitrust enforcers. The...
How Would the Big Tech Self-Preferencing Bill Affect Users?
The Senate looks to be nearing a vote on the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which would prohibit gatekeeping digital platforms...
Big Tech ‘Self-Preferencing’ Bills May Hurt—Not Help— Antitrust Reform
A new paper from Erik Hovenkamp outlines pitfalls contained in newly proposed antitrust reform legislation that targets Big Tech companies. He proposes...
Rep. Ken Buck on the Need for Antitrust Reform: “Big Corporate America Scares People”
In an interview with ProMarket, Republican congressman Ken Buck explains why antitrust enforcement is so crucial to the US economy and American democracy,...
Is It Better to Address the Apple-Google App Store Duopoly Through Antitrust or Regulation?
A new paper analyzes antitrust investigations and private litigation initiated against the Google and Apple app stores, exploring how the main anticompetitive...
How to Prevent Big Tech From Hindering Pathbreaking Innovation in the Metaverse
The transition to the metaverse presents a technological paradigm shift akin to the shift from desktop computers to smartphones, but today’s dominant...
How Apple Locks Out the Competition with Its Digital Key
Apple’s efforts to dominate the contactless payments market and lock up the “digital key” space pose a profound threat to consumer privacy...
Tech Platforms and the Antitrust Duty to Deal
Why is there a widespread view that existing American antitrust law is ill-equipped to address dominant platforms that exclude or discriminate against...
Rep. Cicilline’s Nondiscrimination Bill Would Offer a Lifeline to Independent App Developers
Contrary to the naysayers, the American Choice and Innovation Online Act won’t result in naked iPhones or iPhones cluttered with hundreds of...
The House’s Recent Spate of Antitrust Bills Would Change Big Tech as We Know It
If enacted, the five bills that were introduced in the House this month would represent the most dramatic statutory changes to US...
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Antitrust and Competition
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.
Antitrust and Competition
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.
Antitrust and Competition
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.
Economic History
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.
Antitrust and Competition
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.