Techlash

How the Tension Between Big Business and Antitrust Will Reshape Post-Covid America

Big Business is going to be structuring the response to the pandemic, at least temporarily. A new generation of leaders and thinkers...

The Best Political Economy Books of 2019

A history of American antimonopoly, the case against Big Tech, and how Europe got better than the US at free markets: here are (in no...

The Qualcomm Case: Why Protecting American Tech Monopolies Is a Big Favor to China

The FTC sued the company that monopolized the market of components for cell phones with its aggressive patent policy. However, in the technological race...

A Tale of Hubris and Excess: How Uber Fooled Portland Regulators

In an excerpt from his new book "Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber," New York Times reporter Mike Isaac reveals the details of Uber's...

The News About Antitrust’s Impending Resurgence Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

The federal antitrust agencies don’t appear to be serious about their recent Big Tech push. And given that the Supreme Court and federal judiciary...

Is Amazon Violating the Sherman Act?

A new paper suggests that Amazon’s negative cash flow rapid expansion story may in fact conceal a long-term predatory pricing strategy that violates existing...

“It’s Crucial to Break Up Facebook”

Columbia law professor Tim Wu on The Curse of Bigness, neo-Brandeisian antitrust, and the lessons we should learn from the first Gilded Age. Four...

If You Don’t Think Today’s Tech Giants Are Vicious, Just Ask Venture Capitalists

Silicon Valley today resembles the deepest part of the jungle known as the triple canopy, where tall trees block out all the light and...

Would Sen. Warner’s Ambitious Plan to Regulate Social Media Giants “Ruin” the Internet—Or Save it?

Sen. Mark Warner’s proposals to regulate social media platforms are by far the most ambitious to come from Congress. We gathered three experts to...

“If You’re Running an Authoritarian Government, You Love Facebook”

In a wide-ranging interview with ProMarket, media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan explains why Facebook has become “too big to manage” and why he believes the...

LATEST NEWS

The Impact of Large Institutional Investors on Innovation Is Not as Positive as One Might Expect

In a new paper, Bing Guo, Dennis C. Hutschenreiter, David Pérez-Castrillo, and Anna Toldrà-Simats study how large institutional investors impact firm innovation. The authors find that large institutional investors encourage internal research and development but discourage firm acquisitions that would add patents and knowledge to their firms’ portfolios, hampering overall innovation.

The FTC Needs To Focus Arguments on Technological Transitions After High-Profile Losses

Joshua Gray and Cristian Santesteban argue that the Federal Trade Commission's focus in Meta-Within and Microsoft-Activision on narrow markets like VR fitness apps and consoles missed the boat on the real competition issue: the threat to future competition in nascent markets like VR platforms and cloud gaming.

We Need Better Research on the Relationship Between Market Power and Productivity in the Hospital Industry

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.

Debating the Draft Merger Guidelines: Transcript

On September 7, the Stigler Center hosted a webinar to discuss the draft merger guidelines. What follows is a slightly edited transcript of the event.

Holding Up the News

Meta has silenced news organizations’ social media accounts in response to Canada’s Online News Act, a law not yet in effect. Josh Braun describes the reasoning behind such legislation, its potential flaws, and how Meta, particularly Facebook, has turned the Canadian wildfire crisis into a regulatory pressure campaign.