Competition

Self-Preferencing Theories Need To Account for Exploitative Abuse

Patrice Bougette, Oliver Budzinski, and Frédéric Marty argue in their research that antitrust authorities on both sides of the Atlantic must take...

A New Merger Tool Protects Consumers from Limits of the Cournot Effect

The widely accepted Cournot effect assumes that the merger of complementary firms benefits downstream firms and consumers (in addition to the merged...

User Hesitancy Increases Online Platforms’ Incumbency Advantage

“Incumbency advantage” among Big Tech platforms recognizes that network effects prevent users from leaving established platforms for emerging competitors. Gary Biglaiser, Jacques...

The Needless Desertion of Robinson-Patman

ProMarket is kicking-off a discussion of the Robinson-Patman Act (RPA), an antitrust law preventing price discrimination that hasn't been enforced in decades....

Antitrust Enforcement, Inflation and Corporate Greed: What do we know?

At a recent Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) event, panelists, including the Stigler Center's own Luigi Zingales, reflected on the roles...

2023 Antitrust and Competition Conference: Call for Papers

The Stigler Center is inviting submissions of short academic articles (up to 3000 words) focused on the development of a legal/economic...

Five New Pieces You Should Read from Chicago Booth Review

Chicago Booth Review recently published its fall issue covering a variety of new research. We suggest five articles from the issue on...

Researchers Find Reduced Competition After Pandemic

The chart of the week comes from a new research paper that documents the increase in small business closures during the Covid...

Should The Competitive Process Test Replace The Consumer Welfare Standard?

Jonathan Kanter, Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice Antitrust Division, recently gave a speech condemning the use of the consumer...

Who Benefits From Competitive State-Level Legislatures?

A new paper finds that when interparty competition in state legislatures is high, well-connected and influential incumbent firms are best able to...

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.