May 7, 2019

Is Amazon Guilty of Predatory Pricing?

Kristian Stout & Alec Stapp

Predatory pricing is a rather rare anticompetitive practice because the “predator” runs the risk of bankrupting itself in the process of trying to drive rivals out of business with below-cost pricing.

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

April 25, 2019

Deadweight loss from no monopoly

Eric Fruits

The once-mighty Blockbuster video chain is now down to a single store, in Bend, Oregon. It appears to be the only video rental store in Bend, aside from those offering “adult” features. Does that make Blockbuster a monopoly?

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

April 12, 2019

BRIEF OF RICHARD A. EPSTEIN & GEOFFREY A. MANNE, IN SUPPORT OF Defendant in Pulse Network, LLC v. Visa Incorporated

Geoffrey A. Manne & Richard Epstein

To establish antitrust standing, Pulse must show not only “injury causally linked to an illegal presence in the market” but also antitrust injury “attributable to an anti-competitive aspect of the practice under scrutiny.”

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

April 3, 2019

Is European Competition Law Protectionist? Unpacking the Commission’s Unflattering Track Record

Dirk Auer

In a new ICLE Issue Brief, we question whether there is any merit to these claims of protectionism. We show that, since the entry into force of Regulation 1/2003, US firms have borne the lion’s share of monetary penalties imposed by the Commission for breaches of competition law.

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

April 1, 2019

This Too Shall Pass: Unassailable Monopolies That Were, in Hindsight, Eminently Assailable

Geoffrey A. Manne & Alec Stapp

Elizabeth Warren wants to break up the tech giants — Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple — claiming they have too much power and represent a danger to our democracy. As part of our response to her proposal, we shared a couple of headlines from 2007 claiming that MySpace had an unassailable monopoly in the social media market.

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

March 29, 2019

Telecom regulators: Don’t get rolled by Rewheel

Eric Fruits

Will the merger between T-Mobile and Sprint make consumers better or worse off? A central question in the review of this merger—as it is in all merger reviews—is the likely effects that the transaction will have on consumers.

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

March 28, 2019

Amazon is not essential, except to the EU’s flawed investigations

Kristian Stout & Geoffrey A. Manne

Amazon has largely avoided the crosshairs of antitrust enforcers to date (leaving aside the embarrassing dangerous threats of arbitrary enforcement by some US presidential candidates). The reasons seem obvious: in the US it handles a mere 5% of all retail sales (with lower shares in the EU), and it consistently provides access to a wide array of affordable goods.

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

March 12, 2019

Elizabeth Warren wants to turn the internet into a literal sewer (service)

Geoffrey A. Manne & Alec Stapp

Near the end of her new proposal to break up Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple, Senator Warren asks, “So what would the Internet look like after all these reforms?” To Warren, our most dynamic and innovative companies constitute a problem that needs solving.

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

March 11, 2019

TIM WU’S BAD HISTORY: BIG BUSINESS AND THE RISE OF FASCISM

Alec Stapp

The recent increase in economic concentration and monopoly power make the United States “ripe for dictatorship,” claims Columbia law professor Tim Wu in his new book, The Curse of Bigness.

Antitrust & Consumer Protection