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Showing 9 of 140 Publications by Ben Sperry
TOTM The central irony of the Economists’ Hour is that in criticizing the influence of economists over policy, Appelbaum engages in a great deal of economic speculation himself. Appelbaum would discard the opinions of economists in favor of “the lessons of history,” but all he is left with is unsupported economic reasoning.
John Maynard Keynes wrote in his famous General Theory that “[t]he ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”
Read the full piece here.
TOTM For most people, the word discrimination has a pejorative connotation of animus based upon prejudice ... but another definition is a lot less charged: the act of making or perceiving a difference.
A spate of recent newspaper investigations and commentary have focused on Apple allegedly discriminating against rivals in the App Store. The underlying assumption is that Apple, as a vertically integrated entity that operates both a platform for third-party apps and also makes it own apps, is acting nefariously whenever it “discriminates” against rival apps through prioritization, enters into popular app markets, or charges a “tax” or “surcharge” on rival apps.
TOTM The shift in oversight responsibility from parents to the FTC will likely lead to less-effective oversight, more difficult user interfaces, less children’s programming, and higher costs for everyone — all without obviously mitigating any harm in the first place.
The FTC’s recent YouTube settlement and $170 million fine related to charges that YouTube violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) has the issue of targeted advertising back in the news. With an upcoming FTC workshop and COPPA Rule Review looming, it’s worth looking at this case in more detail and reconsidering COPPA’s 2013 amendment to the definition of personal information.
TOTM Contrary to established Supreme Court precedent, the district court’s decision relies on mere inferences to establish anticompetitive effect. The decision, if it stands, would render a wide range of potentially procompetitive conduct presumptively illegal and thus harm consumer welfare.
The ICLE amicus brief focuses on the ways that the district court exceeded the “error cost” guardrails erected by the Supreme Court to minimize the risk and cost of mistaken antitrust decisions, particularly those that wrongly condemn procompetitive behavior. As the brief notes at the outset…
TOTM Monday July 22, ICLE filed a regulatory comment arguing the leased access requirements enforced by the FCC are unconstitutional compelled speech that violate the First Amendment.
Monday July 22, ICLE filed a regulatory comment arguing the leased access requirements enforced by the FCC are unconstitutional compelled speech that violate the First Amendment.
Regulatory Comments ICLE submitted comments to the FCC on the First Amendment implications of the leased access rules. Associate Director, Legal Research Ben Sperry argued the changes in the video marketplace towards competition undercut the justification for subjecting regulation of cable operators' speech to only intermediate scrutiny.
ICLE submitted comments to the FCC on the First Amendment implications of the leased access rules. Associate Director, Legal Research Ben Sperry argued the changes in the video marketplace towards competition undercut the justification for subjecting regulation of cable operators’ speech to only intermediate scrutiny. As a result, the leased access rules should be reviewed as compelled speech under strict scrutiny. The leased access rules are not narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest and therefore would fail under the strict scrutiny standard.
Click here to read the full comments.
TOTM Despite the simplistic narrative tying President Trump’s vision of the world to conservatism, there is nothing conservative about his views on the First Amendment and how it applies to social media companies.
Yesterday was President Trump’s big “Social Media Summit” where he got together with a number of right-wing firebrands to decry the power of Big Tech to censor conservatives online. According to the Wall Street Journal…
TOTM After spending a few years away from ICLE and directly engaging in the day to day grind of indigent criminal defense as a public defender, I now have a new appreciation for the ways economic tools can explain behavior that I had not before studied.
After spending a few years away from ICLE and directly engaging in the day to day grind of indigent criminal defense as a public defender, I now have a new appreciation for the ways economic tools can explain behavior that I had not before studied. For instance, I think the law and economics tradition, specifically the insights of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek on the importance of price signals, can explain one of the major problems for public defenders and their clients: without price signals, there is no rational way to determine the best way to spend one’s time.
ICLE White Paper 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.
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. Focusing on one influential study — Paying a Premium on Your Premium (“Paying a Premium”) by Dafny, Duggan & Ramanarayanan (“Dafny, et al.”) — as a jumping off point, we highlight some of the many reasons that past is not prologue.
In short: extrapolated, long-term, cumulative, average effects drawn from 17-year old data may grab headlines, but they really don’t tell us much of anything about the likely effects of a particular merger today, or about the effects of increased concentration in any particular product or geographic market.
