Market power

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...

Are Monopolists or Cartels the True Source of Anticompetitive US Political Power?

Trade associations are often the biggest obstacles to competitive markets, especially when those organizations use their influence to change public policy in...

The Understated Relationship Between Market Dominance and Political Influence

A new model explains the feedback loop between monopolies and politicians and the unexpected developments in the relationships between the two, as...

Countering Employer Monopsony Power With Fundamental Labor Rights

Labor policies grounded in the fundamental rights of workers can reinforce the aims of a proposed labor antitrust agenda by limiting a...

How the Rise of Labor Market Power Helps Explain the Fall of US Manufacturing Employment

A new working paper explores the increase in labor market power in the US and what’s driving it. It shows manufacturing workers...

The Ties that Bind Workers to Firms: No-Poach Agreements, Noncompetes, and Other Ways Firms Create and Exercise Labor Market Power

Collusive no-poach agreements are per se illegal, but noncompete clauses are not. Recent research casts doubt on the rationale for this legal...

The Best Political Economy Books of 2021

A scholarly examination of market’s power toll on American workers, the collected works of a pioneering economic thinker, an ambitious narrative of...

The Sherman Act and Abuse of Dominance in the Age of Networks

In order to be more effective in networked markets, the US should adopt a version of the EU’s “abuse of dominance” standard...

Why a “Whole-of-Government” Approach is the Solution to Antitrust’s Current Labor Problem

For the majority of America’s regulatory history, the problem of employer monopsony was understood as a competition policy issue that required direct...

Antitrust Law’s Unwritten Rules of Unfair Competition

Does the Sherman Act actually “protect competition, not competitors”? An examination of the case law reveals a more nuanced picture, in which...

LATEST NEWS

AI For the Antitrust Regulator

Cary Coglianese lays out the potential, and the considerations, for antitrust regulators to use machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms.

Creation over Time in Copyright and Patent

On May 18, the United States Supreme Court decided two intellectual property cases with two seemingly different results. A closer look, however, reveals a complimentary concern with the monopolistic power of first movers and how the legal system should enable innovation from second movers over time, writes Randy Picker.

ESG Standards’ Good, Bad and Ugly

The Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State hosted a virtual event discussing the standards, metrics and disclosures of investments focused on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals. The following is a transcript of the event.

Reregulate.

Lee Hepner and William J. McGee respond to Clifford Winston’s ProMarket piece asserting that further deregulation of the airline industry would resolve problems in the industry. Instead, the authors claim a return to regulation would produce better results for travelers.

A World With Far Fewer Mergers

Brooke Fox and Walter Frick analyze research and ideas presented at the Stigler Center Antitrust and Competition Conference that question the value of mergers.