economists

Chart of the Week: Concentration in Ticket-Selling Market Produces Costly Outcomes

Economists overwhelmingly agree that the lack of competition in the market for ticket-selling intermediaries leads to attendees paying more, according to a...

Chart of the Week: Economists Don’t Think Congress Should Make Price Gouging Illegal

Most economists disagree with a new bill in the US that would set limits on "unconscionably excessive prices," according to a recent...

Neoliberal Economists Are Giving Biden Bad Advice on Inflation

To spare the economy from the pain of further interest rate hikes, the President should aggressively pursue anticompetitive conduct by companies in...

The Passive Mechanisms of Common Ownership

A new paper explores the conundrum that common ownership poses for antitrust enforcers and competition and corporate scholars and sheds light on...

DOJ Antitrust Head Jonathan Kanter: “We Are Making It Very Clear: We’re Going to Hold Individuals Accountable”

In an interview with ProMarket, assistant attorney general Jonathan Kanter, head of the Department of Justice’s antitrust division, explains why he believes...

Top Ukrainian Economist Asks West to Cut Off Russian Technology

Tymofiy Mylovanov, Ukraine’s former Minister of Economic Development, Trade and Agriculture and current president of the Kyiv School of Economics, appeared on...

Inflation, Corporate Power, and the Forgotten New Deal

A forgotten aspect of the New Deal is that it took place amid inflation and rising prices. Contemporary debates over inflation and whether corporate greed...

Why Jean Fourastié’s Theory of Economic Development is Still Relevant Today

In 1949, the innovative French economist and policymaker Jean Fourastié introduced a theory of growth and technological development that economists could still...

What Economists Mean When They Say “Consumer Welfare Standard”

Though coined by academic economists, the term “consumer welfare standard” has been captured and changed by the economic school of thought known...

When Milton Friedman Sided With Keynes Over Hayek on Inflation

In an excerpt from his book Samuelson Friedman: The Battle Over the Free Market, Nicholas Wapshott explores the disagreements between Friedman and...

LATEST NEWS

Do Wealth Taxes Significantly Curb Wealth Inequality?

Politicians and governments in the United States and elsewhere have recently proposed or implemented wealth taxes to supplement revenue and reduce wealth inequality. In a new study, Samira Marti, Isabel Z. Martínez, and Florian Scheuer show how decreases in wealth taxes led to increases in wealth inequality in Switzerland, though they find that these decreases alone are not enough to explain the magnitude of widening disparities.

Merged Firms Offer Less Product Variety

In new research, Enghin Atalay, Alan Sorensen, Christopher Sullivan, and Wanjia Zhu find that mergers and acquisitions often lead to the merged firm offering less product variety than when the two firms operated pre-merger.

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.