September 22, 2017

antitrust laws are not some meta-legislation authorizing whatever activists want

Geoffrey A. Manne

In a recent post at the (appallingly misnamed) ProMarket blog (the blog of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business — George Stigler is rolling…

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

December 8, 2016

The Weakness of the Economic Evidence against Health Insurance Mergers

Geoffrey A. Manne & Ben Sperry

This white paper counsels extreme caution in the use of past statistical studies of the purported effects of health insurance company mergers to infer that today’s proposed mergers — between Aetna/Humana and Anthem/Cigna — will likely have similar effects.

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

September 28, 2016

The DOJ-FTC IP Guidelines: Suggestions for Promoting Innovation

Kristian Stout

This week, the International Center for Law & Economics filed comments on the proposed revision to the joint U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) – U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust-IP Licensing Guidelines.

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

September 26, 2016

Comments, In the Matter of the Joint Guidelines for the Licensing of IP

Kristian Stout & Geoffrey A. Manne

The proposed guidelines are founded on a commendable set of underlying assumptions: that intellectual property (“IP”) is, for antitrust purposes, amenable to the same sort of analysis that applies to other forms of property...

Intellectual Property

June 30, 2016

Critics of health insurance mergers misapply the evidence and misinterpret the market

Geoffrey A. Manne

As regulatory review of the merger between Aetna and Humana hits the homestretch, merger critics have become increasingly vocal in their opposition to the deal. This is particularly true of…

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

February 16, 2016

Sagers on the Apple e-books case: Why does everybody hate competition so much?

Chris Sagers

By Chris Sagers United States v. Apple has fascinated me continually ever since the instantly-sensational complaint was made public, more than three years ago. Just one small, recent manifestation of the larger…

February 16, 2016

Hazlett on the Apple e-books case: The Apple case is a throwback to Dr. Miles, and that’s not a good thing

Thomas Hazlett

The Apple e-books case is throwback to Dr. Miles, the 1911 Supreme Court decision that managed to misinterpret the economics of competition and so thwart productive activity for over a century.…

February 16, 2016

Reed on the Apple e-books case: “We can remember it for you wholesale” – why the model matters in Apple e-books

Morgan Reed

By Morgan Reed In Philip K. Dick’s famous short story that inspired the Total Recall movies, a company called REKAL could implant “extra-factual memories” into the minds of anyone. That technology may be fictional, but…

February 16, 2016

Kolasky (2) on the Apple e-books case: Coordination, even horizontal coordination, isn’t per se illegal

William Kolasky

By William Kolasky Jon Jacobson in his initial posting claims that it would be “hard to find an easier case” than Apple e-Books, and David Balto and Chris Sagers seem to agree. I suppose that would be true if,…