Europe

Should the European Union Require Tech Firms to Adopt a Common Charger?

According to a new European Commission directive expected to be approved in the next few months, tech firms will have to use...

Why Aligning Antitrust Policy With Sustainability is a Moral Imperative 

The looming ecological disaster means that it is time for competition researchers, policymakers, lawyers, and economists to devise competition policies that focus...

How Interest Groups Utilize Reverse Revolving Doors to Influence Legislative Voting

A new study finds that legislators who worked for interest groups before taking office influence the voting behavior of their colleagues when...

The Incoming Currency War

Four powerful forces—cryptocurrencies, the decoupling of geographical and monetary boundaries, ad-based digital platforms’ foray into the world of payments, and the value...

Concentration in the EU: Where It is Increasing and Why

Increasing concentration is not unique to the US—recent studies show that concentration is rising in Europe as well, although to a lesser...

OpenLux: Why the Era of Financial Secrecy Needs to End

The #OpenLux investigation underlines that, despite undeniable progress in terms of transparency, there is still considerable work to be done in the...

OpenLux: Despite Reform Efforts, Luxembourg Remains an “Offshore Hub in the Heart of Europe”

Dozens of foreign citizens linked to corruption, embezzlement of public funds, organized crime, and tax crime have opened companies in Luxembourg, seemingly...

Liberal Democracies Have a Duty to Respond to China’s New National Security Law

According to China’s sweeping new national security law, European citizens who argue in favor of self-determination for Hong Kong in their home...

Not Everyone Agreed With Alberto Alesina, but Nobody Could Ignore the Work He Did

Harvard professor Jeffry Fridel was a friend and a colleague of Alberto Alesina. They shared the beginning of their careers, a house...

The Price of Democracy: a Webinar with Julia Cagé, Andrea Prat, and Guy Rolnik

At this trying time, there is a particularly high demand for reliable and trustworthy information. To address this demand by Booth students, alumni, faculty,...

LATEST NEWS

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.

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.