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Corpus Christi Caller Times – An ICLE white paper about the Durbin amendment UK’s Digital Markets was cited in an op-ed that appeared in the Corpus Christi Caller Times. You can read full piece here.

Again, we know from experience what happened after the Durbin Amendment of 2010. Research for the International Center for Law and Economics found that “although the Durbin Amendment had generated benefits for large-box retailers, it had harmed many other merchants, especially those specializing in small-ticket items, and imposed substantial net costs on the majority of consumers, especially those from lower-income households.”

Bloomberg Law – ICLE President Geoffrey Manne and Academic Affiliate Keith Hylton were both quoted by Bloomberg Law in a story about the FTC’s antitrust case against Amazon. You can read full piece here.

Although the complaint doesn’t characterize them as two sides of the same market, they appear to function as one, said Keith Hylton, a professor at Boston University School of Law. But the link between them may not be as strong as in American Express, he cautioned.

…Amazon’s offerings to sellers go beyond American Express’ interactions with merchants. So it isn’t just facilitating the transaction like American Express is, making that case likely irrelevant, said Geoffrey Manne, president of the International Center for Law and Economics..

By choosing to define two connected markets rather than a single, two-sided one, the FTC may be trying to dodge the Supreme Court’s test, Manne said.

Daily Trojan – ICLE Academic Affiliate and University of Southern California Provost Andrew T. Guzman was profiled by the Daily Trojan in a story about his Latino heritage and experience as the Gould School of Law’s first Latino dean. You can read full piece here.

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Andrew Guzman grew up between his Canadian and Dominican identities. Born and raised in Ottawa, Guzman often traveled to his father’s homeland, the Dominican Republic, to visit his family. During Latinx/e Heritage Month, the Daily Trojan sat down to talk to USC’s first Latine provost — and, formerly, the first Latine dean of the Gould School of Law — about what his Latino identity means to him and how his bicultural upbringing has shaped his career.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Daily Trojan: What does it mean for you to be Latino?

Andrew Guzman: I spent a lot of time in the Dominican Republic when I was very young. It became about my lived experience. It’s always been part of my existence.

My father came to Canada in the ’50s. As the only Latino kid in a very white private school, his strategy — which some immigrants adopt — was assimilation. I grew up in a household that, in terms of its Canadian cultural context, would have looked very typical. But then I would frequently go to the Dominican Republic where everything was obviously typically Dominican.

I lived in two different places, which seemed totally normal when I was a kid. But, in retrospect, it is not normal for everybody. When I was 14, I’d go down to the Dominican Republic, and the cousins that were my age used to drink beer. I’d drink beer with them sitting next to my parents. If I ever was caught drinking beer in Ottawa at 14, I would have gotten in trouble. It never struck me as odd that these were both true at the same time. For me, it has that sort of bicultural reality.

I’m open-minded because of that. I saw my Dominican relatives, I saw my English Canadian reality at home, and I had French Canadian school teachers. When you’re a kid, you don’t try to make these distinctions, and they all resonated with me in the same way.

Euractiv – ICLE Senior Scholar Miko?aj Barczentewicz was cited by Euractiv in a newsletter item about his recent ICLE issue brief on “Schrems III.” You can read full piece here.

Schrems III. The International Center for Law & Economics’s Senior Scholar Miko?aj Barczentewicz published a new issue brief about Schrems III on Monday. The paper discusses such issues as an “adequate level of protection” for personal data, the issue of proportionality of “bulk” data collection and of effective redress, as well as of access to information about American intelligence agencies’ data processes.

The New Statesman – A recent ICLE white paper co-published with the Institute for Economic Affairs about the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill was the subject of an article in The New Statesman. You can read full piece here.

What are we talking about this week? We’re talking about a new paper, Digital Overload: How the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill’s sweeping new powers threaten Britain’s economy. It’s from the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA), written by one of their staffers plus two experts in competition law – Dirk Auer and Lazar Radic. They’re based at a co-publishing organisation called the International Centre for Law and Economics, a “”non-partisan research centre” that looks to “promote the use of law and economics methodologies to inform public policy debates”, according to its website.

Yahoo News – ICLE Director of Competition Policy Dirk Auer and President Geoffrey Manne were quoted by Yahoo News in a story about the FTC’s antitrust case brought against Amazon that cited their recent New York Post op-ed. You can read full piece here.

“Unfortunately, the case is reminiscent of Captain Ahab’s doomed pursuit of Moby Dick — it is guided more by desire and ideology than a reasonable assessment of the costs and benefits. The result will be a wasteful battle all but guaranteed to founder in court.” — Geoffrey A. Manne and Dirk Auer, New York Post

FEE Stories – ICLE Chief Economist Brian Albrecht was cited in a blog post at FEE Stories about the Federal Trade Commission’s major antitrust case against Amazon. You can read full piece here.

To sum up, the new FTC case against Amazon is rooted in familiar problems with antitrust cases—ambiguity and an inappropriate benchmark for competition remain at the heart of these complaints. I can only cover so much ground here, but if you’re interested in learning more about some of the issues with the case, I recommend following the International Center for Law and Economics’s own Brian Albrecht. Brian has analyzed this case with more technical detail and dedicates many Twitter threads and Substack posts to antitrust issues in theory and practice.

Law360 – ICLE Senior Scholar Eric Fruits was quoted by Law360 in a story about the Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to reinstate net neutrality. You can read full piece here.

Eric Fruits, a senior scholar at the International Center for Law and Economics, told Law360 on Wednesday the FCC has multiple avenues to use common-carrier regulation to affect broadband rates. “One of the big concerns that people have about the Title II reclassification is that it does open the door for rate regulation,” he said. “In some sense, one of the main purposes of Title II, at least with respect to telecoms, is rate regulation.”

Fruits, who recently co-authored a report with Geoffrey Manne on “de facto rate regulation” in the telecom sector, noted that with the 2015 net neutrality order, the FCC made clear it was not tackling that issue. Rosenworcel this week was “pretty adamant that they’re not doing it,” he said, but even so “there are some other issues that I think raise questions.”

For example, the chair mentioned banning paid prioritization several times, which the 2015 Open Internet Order did, “and it’s really hard to say [that] is not a form of rate regulation,” he said.

Another issue that will probably come up is zero-rating, which is an industry practice that involves not applying data caps to certain services. Fruits said that issue was never fully resolved from the 2015 order. “I think that is an issue that could come up again,” he said. “If you get rid of zero-rating, that again, is a form of rate regulation.”

Fruits said other concerns could arise from a Title II classification such as rates for attaching broadband equipment to utility poles.

Insurance News Net – A recent ICLE white paper on the failure of the insurance regulatory system created by California’s Proposition 103 was cited in a story in Insurance News Net. You can read full piece here.

A new white paper by International Center for Law & Economics said 1988’s Prop 103 rating system, which was intended to protect consumers from arbitrary insurance rates and encourage a competitive marketplace, was “slow, imprecise, inflexible, unpredictable,” and was of questionable value to the state’s unique rate-intervenor system.

“Prop 103’s suppression of property-insurance rates in the private market has contributed to an availability crisis and the shunting of policyholders into the surplus-lines market and the California FAIR Plan, both of which will inevitably have to raise rates accordingly to be able to meet their obligations,” the ICLE authors wrote. “Prop 103 has created an insurance market that struggles to work efficiently even in the best of times and is virtually impossible to sustain in periods of acute stress.”