FTC

How To Handle Big Tech Acquisitions Under Uncertainty

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

The FTC’s Non-Compete Ban Will Force Questions Over the Scope of its Authority

To understand why a proposed rule could spark a Supreme Court battle over the Federal Trade Commission’s powers to regulate the American...

Unfair Methods of Competition

The FTC’s new policy on unfair methods of competition is an assertion of the original purpose of the agency, allowing it to...

The FTC Should Quickly Issue New Section 5 Enforcement Guidelines

Unfair methods of competition are prohibited by Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act. The FTC has withdrawn the existing...

Larry Summers Cautions Antitrust Regulators Against Broad-Brush Policy

In a wide-ranging interview with ProMarket, Summers expands on recent criticism of top antitrust enforcement officials, efforts to stymie Big Tech, monopsony,...

Q&A With FTC Chair Lina Khan: “The Word ‘Efficiency’ Doesn’t Appear Anywhere in the Antitrust Statutes”

FTC Chair Lina Khan sat down with Guy Rolnik to discuss changes in governmental posture toward antitrust enforcement, her goals as head...

A Posner-Stigler Smoking Gun?

A memo from George Stigler and Richard Posner to the Reagan administration was recently unearthed. To understand the meaning behind the memo,...

Populism at the FTC Upsets the Antitrust Religion of Consumer Welfare: A Reply to Sokol and Wickelgren

Institutional change, on any fundamental level, will have those that seek to defend the status quo up in arms. But in order...

Populism at the FTC Undermines Antitrust Enforcement

The FTC plays an essential role in curbing illegal mergers and monopolies and increasing its enforcement is welcome. But to do so...

The FTC Was Correct to Withdraw the Vertical Merger Guidelines

The 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines, now withdrawn by the FTC, did not represent sound merger policy, argues Steven Salop; rather, they were...

LATEST NEWS

Algorithmic Collusion in the Housing Market

While the development of artificial intelligence has led to efficient business strategies, such as dynamic pricing, this new technology is vulnerable to collusion and consumer harm when companies share the same software through a central platform. Gabriele Bortolotti highlights the importance of antitrust enforcement in this domain for the second article in our series, using as a case study the RealPage class action lawsuit in the Seattle housing market.

The Future Markets Model Explains Meta/Within: A Reply to Herb Hovenkamp

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.

The Chicago Boys and the Chilean Neoliberal Project

In a new book, The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism, Sebastian Edwards details the history of neoliberalism in Chile over the past seventy years. The Chicago Boys—a group of Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago through the U.S. State Department’s “Chile Project”—played a central role in neoliberalism’s ascent during General Augusto Pinochet’s rule. What follows is an excerpt from the book on University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman’s 1975 visit to Chile to meet with Pinochet and business leaders.

Creating a Modern Antitrust Welfare Standard that Integrates Post-Chicago and Neo-Brandeisian Goals

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.

Getting Partisans To Listen to One Another Can Reduce Political Polarization

In new research, Guglielmo Briscese and Michèle Belot find that reminding Americans of shared values can open lines of communication and help reduce political polarization.