Market power

Allen Grunes comments on the core continuity in antitrust enforcement between the Biden and second Trump administrations. He argues that the continuity reflects, in Zephyr Teachout’s words, the “homecoming” of antitrust to the “domain of law.” The following is a revised version of remarks Grunes delivered at the Loyola Antitrust Colloquium in April.

Jonathan B. Baker and Fiona Scott Morton challenge the interpretations of two new papers from Carl Shapiro & Ali Yurukoglu and Nathan Miller, which question economy-wide trends toward a rise in market power and, if any such trend has occurred, that it is due to lax antitrust enforcement.

In new research, Tommaso Crescioli & Toon Van Overbeke find that small business owners and their families who have lost revenue share to rising market concentration among big businesses have turned to far-right political parties to express their grievances.

Academics have argued that changes in product markup trends show that the European markets, abetted by the adoption of the Single Market and stronger antitrust enforcement, have become more competitive over the last half-century, whereas American markets have become more concentrated. In their research, Tommaso Crescioli and Angelo Martelli argue that a study of labor market power in Europe muddles this picture of higher competition in Europe.

Antitrust debates have largely ignored questions about the relationship between market power and productivity, and scholars have provided little guidance on the issue due to data limitations. However, data is plentiful on the hospital industry for both market power and operating costs and productivity, and researchers need to take advantage, writes David Ennis.

Does investing in information technology (IT) enable firms to “scale without mass” and increase their market share? In a new paper, Erik Brynjolfsson, Wang Jin, and Xiupeng Wang examine how IT affects firm size, market concentration, and the labor share of revenue.

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

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

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

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