August 31, 2011

Why Is Sprint’s Stock Surging Upon the Announcement of the DOJ’s Challenge to the Proposed AT&T / T-Mobile Merger?

Joshua Wright

Basic economic theory underlies the conventional antitrust wisdom that if a merger makes the merging party a more effective competitorby lowering its costs, rivals facing this more effective competitor post-merger…

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

August 31, 2011

A couple of quick thoughts on the DOJ’s filing to block AT&T/T-Mobile

Geoffrey A. Manne

As Josh noted, the DOJ filed a complaint today to block the merger.  I’m sure we’ll have much, much more to say on the topic, but here are a few…

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

June 21, 2011

Debiasing: Firms Versus Administrative Agencies

Joshua Wright

Daniel Kahnemann and co-authors discuss, in the most recent issue of the Harvard Business Review (HT: Brian McCann), various strategies for debiasing individual decisions that impact firm performance.  Much of…

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

May 25, 2011

House Committee on the Judiciary Hearing on the AT&T / T-Mobile Merger

Joshua Wright

Tomorrow morning.  I’ll post my written testimony here tomorrow. Hearing on: “How Will the Proposed Merger Between AT&T and T-Mobile Affect Wireless Telecommunications Competition?” Thursday 5/26/2011 – 10:30 a.m. 2141…

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

May 10, 2011

Barnett v. Barnett on Antitrust

Joshua Wright

Tom Barnett (Covington & Burling) represents Expedia in, among other things, its efforts to persuade a US antitrust agency to bring a case against Google involving the alleged use of…

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

April 22, 2011

Sacrificing Consumer Welfare in the Search Bias Debate

Joshua Wright

Eric Clemons and Nehal Madhani have a posted a series of short blog posts on the Huffington Post focusing on Google, antitrust, and more specifically, vertical integration and search (Part…

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

April 13, 2011

More on the Fighting Antitrust Agencies

Joshua Wright

One additional observation on the WSJ story Paul mentioned.  Much has been written about the strained relationship between the FTC and DOJ in antitrust matters.  There has, of course, never…

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

April 8, 2011

DOJ clears Google-ITA

Geoffrey A. Manne

The press release is here. Notably, the settlement obligates Google to continue product development and to license ITA software on commercially-reasonable terms, seemingly for 5 years.  Frankly, I can’t imagine Google…

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

April 4, 2011

Market Definition and the Merger Guidelines, Again

Joshua Wright

Do the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines require market definition?  Will the agencies define markets in cases they bring?  Are they required to do so by the Guidelines?  By the Clayton…

Antitrust & Consumer Protection