April Threads 2026
Threads from ICLE scholars on trending issues for the month of April 2026.
Just got the new EU merger guidelines. Still working through them. Sharing some first reactions. Tl;dr: this is a more complex document than headlines are likely to suggest. Some things I didn't expect. Some things I feared are in there. Thread ? 1/ https://t.co/6BajuCYTGE
— Lazar Radic (@laz_radic) April 30, 2026
Just got the new EU merger guidelines. Still working through them. Sharing some first reactions. Tl;dr: this is a more complex document than headlines are likely to suggest. Some things I didn't expect. Some things I feared are in there. Thread ? 1/ https://t.co/6BajuCYTGE
— Lazar Radic (@laz_radic) April 30, 2026
So we have new draft EU guidelines. There is lots to dig into. 90 pages. Most of it is housekeeping.
But I think there are two provisions that are genuinely new economics, and they point in opposite directions. pic.twitter.com/cpLrLFuCI0
— Brian Albrecht (@BrianCAlbrecht) April 30, 2026
As the FCC calls in Disney/ABC's licenses for renewal, it is worth considering again whether we really want the FCC in charge of making content-based decisions under the public interest standard. a ?https://t.co/rCKMZKBiXP
— Ben Sperry (@RBenSperry) April 28, 2026
Stacy and the CA AG say this is "blatant price fixing." It's not. The framing is doing work the evidence doesn't. It's argument by winks and nods.
Most of what's quoted is Amazon enforcing a de facto MFN. "Don't let us be undercut" is not the same as "Amazon, Walmart, and Chewy… https://t.co/C0mrKHNJdu
— Brian Albrecht (@BrianCAlbrecht) April 21, 2026
The EU tells Google not to integrate AI into Search. It tells Meta not to integrate AI into WhatsApp.
The message to Web-2.0 incumbents: compete in AI—just not too effectively.
My new piece on why Brussels' approach to AI competition doesn't add up:https://t.co/REiqVaB25m
— Dirk Auer (@AuerDirk) April 17, 2026
“Market microstructure and informational complexity” with @GuthmannR, just accepted at Journal of Public Economic Theory ?
This is still my favorite paper I’ve written and glad it found a home after all these years pic.twitter.com/5xKA8bIYQD
— Brian Albrecht (@BrianCAlbrecht) April 17, 2026
BRAND NEW article in @EurJRR? pic.twitter.com/8oPrRputO5
— Giuseppe Colangelo (@GiuColangelo) April 17, 2026
Klein (1993) is supposedly on tying. It's so much more. Holdups, market power definitions.
The nugget throughout is that pricing discretion is not the same thing as antitrust market power.
I'm over at @TOTMblog on this foundational paperhttps://t.co/uhhV5pLuDn
— Brian Albrecht (@BrianCAlbrecht) April 16, 2026
Dwarkesh asks what's actually bottlenecking AI capacity right now.
Huang's first answer isn't fabs. Isn't memory. Isn't power. Isn't even regulation. It's plumbers and electricians.
I think Huang is more in line with how economists think about this than how AI people do.
In… https://t.co/pCEZWrhsVH pic.twitter.com/A9K1gRsjae
— Brian Albrecht (@BrianCAlbrecht) April 15, 2026
"Moore’s Law is dead" – Jensen Huang
? ? ?
A bit shocking to hear as someone who just wrote a paper on Moore's law. But I think this fits exactly with our point.
Nvidia's last two flagship AI chip generations were basically both 4nm, different names. Transistor scaling… https://t.co/pCEZWrhsVH
— Brian Albrecht (@BrianCAlbrecht) April 15, 2026
Antitrust is a perpetual tug of war between two visions: one that defers to consumer choice, and one that seeks to correct it. ?1/7 pic.twitter.com/NwlTSvcsIy
— Lazar Radic (@laz_radic) April 15, 2026
Some scholars want to ditch consumer welfare for a "dashboard" that also weighs democracy, inequality, small business, privacy, and more.
They claim it's grounded in modern economics. It isn't.
New paper with @ErikHovenkamp, forthcoming at George Mason Law Review pic.twitter.com/NpYTzcnt44
— Brian Albrecht (@BrianCAlbrecht) April 13, 2026
"Abduction and the Demand Curve"
A new paper with @EconTraina
The demand curve is the most basic object in economics. Hold everything else fixed, change the price, see what happens. Ceteris paribus. Day one stuff. Okay, maybe day 3.
But what does "everything else" include?… pic.twitter.com/TZJa3opOvN
— Brian Albrecht (@BrianCAlbrecht) April 9, 2026
“We’re treating these companies [tech] as if they were crack houses…yet they are amongst the most productive elements in society.”
? on ?? quotes from our recent Substance over Slogans conference in Rome (video at the end) 1/9 pic.twitter.com/QpiD7cuXbs
— Lazar Radic (@laz_radic) April 9, 2026