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Showing 9 of 1636 Results in Antitrust
TOTM Some serious reading first on American Needle, Inc. v. National Football League, No. 08-661 (U.S. S. Ct.)… Read the full piece here.
Some serious reading first on American Needle, Inc. v. National Football League, No. 08-661 (U.S. S. Ct.)…
Read the full piece here.
TOTM Volume 16, Issue 4 of the George Mason Law Review (which I received in my mailbox today) has a well timed issue from its antitrust . . .
Volume 16, Issue 4 of the George Mason Law Review (which I received in my mailbox today) has a well timed issue from its antitrust symposium featuring several articles on revisions to the Merger Guidelines. Especially recommended is DOJ economist Greg Werden’s article here, which usefully sets the stage for some of the important debates. Here is a key excerpt from Werden’s analysis, which I think can fairly be interpreted as coming out “against” revision…
TOTM As I skimmed through the White House White Paper on innovation (HT: Patently-O), I noticed that a repeated theme in the document is that US . . .
As I skimmed through the White House White Paper on innovation (HT: Patently-O), I noticed that a repeated theme in the document is that US innovation policy must “Promote Competitive Markets that Spur Productive Entrepreneurship” (e.g., p. 9). There is no real substantive discussion of antitrust issues in the White Paper, except for the following passage, suggesting that the key role for antitrust in promoting innovation is to…
TOTM The possibility of new Merger Guidelines has been much discussed in the antitrust community, particularly in light of appointment of the two new chief agency . . .
The possibility of new Merger Guidelines has been much discussed in the antitrust community, particularly in light of appointment of the two new chief agency economists, Carl Shapiro and Joe Farrell, who have done substantial work on the economics of horizontal mergers and market definition. Today, the FTC and DOJ announced a series of workshops and period for public comment to explore potential revision of the Guidelines…
TOTM Not very, according to the President in his recent health care speech, making the case that lack of competition and for-profit monopolists are what ails . . .
Not very, according to the President in his recent health care speech, making the case that lack of competition and for-profit monopolists are what ails the health care market…
Scholarship Abstract Harold Demsetz once claimed that ‘economics has no antitrust relevant theory of competition.’ Demsetz offered this provocative statement as an introduction to an economic . . .
Harold Demsetz once claimed that ‘economics has no antitrust relevant theory of competition.’ Demsetz offered this provocative statement as an introduction to an economic concept with critical implications for the antitrust enterprise: the multi-dimensional nature of competition. Competition does not take place upon a single margin, such as price competition, but several dimensions that are often inversely correlated such that a liability rule deterring one form of competition will result in more of another. This insight has important implications for the current policy debate concerning how to design antitrust liability standards for conduct involving both static product market competition and dynamic innovative activity. The primary purpose of this essay is to revisit Demsetz’s broader challenge to antitrust regulation in the context of the frequently discussed tradeoffs between innovation and price competition. I summarize recent developments in our knowledge of the relationship between competition and innovation, highlighting the deficiencies that significantly constrain antitrust enforcers’ abilities to confidently calculate inevitable welfare tradeoffs. I conclude by discussing policy implications that follow from these limitations.
Scholarship "Innovation is critical to economic growth. While it is well understood that legal institutions play an important role in fostering an environment conducive to innovation and its commercialization, much less is known about the optimal design of specific institutions..."
“Innovation is critical to economic growth. While it is well understood that legal institutions play an important role in fostering an environment conducive to innovation and its commercialization, much less is known about the optimal design of specific institutions. Regulatory design decisions, and in particular competition policy and intellectual property regimes, can have profoundly positive or negative consequences for economic growth and welfare. However, the ratio of what is known to unknown with respect to the relationship between innovation, competition, and regulatory policy is staggeringly low. In addition to this uncertainty concerning the relationships between regulation, innovation, and economic growth, the process of innovation itself is not well understood.
The regulation of innovation and the optimal design of legal institutions in this environment of uncertainty are two of the most important policy challenges of the 21st century. The essays in this book approach this critical set of problems from an economic perspective, relying on the tools of microeconomics, quantitative analysis, and comparative institutional analysis to explore and begin to provide answers to the myriad challenges facing policymakers. Any legal regime, after all, must attempt to assess the tradeoffs associated with rules that will impact incentives to innovate, allocative efficiency, competition, and freedom of economic actors to commercialize the fruits of their innovative labors and foster economic growth.”
Scholarship Bruce Kobayashi and I have posted our forthcoming chapter, Intellectual Property and Standard Setting, in the forthcoming ABA Antitrust Section Handbook on the Antitrust Aspects of Standard Setting.
This Chapter, forthcoming in the ABA Handbook on the Antitrust Aspects of Standards Setting (2010) provides an analytical overview of the antitrust issues involving intellectual property and standard setting including, but not limited to, patent holdup, royalty stacking, refusals to license, and patent pools.
Scholarship This essay is the introduction to a forthcoming volume entitled, Regulating Innovation: Competition Policy and Patent Law Under Uncertainty (Cambridge U. Press 2009 forthcoming). In . . .
This essay is the introduction to a forthcoming volume entitled, Regulating Innovation: Competition Policy and Patent Law Under Uncertainty (Cambridge U. Press 2009 forthcoming).
In addition to introducing all of the papers in the volume, this essay introduces the organizing themes of the volume. Innovation is critical to economic growth. While it is well understood that legal institutions play an important role in fostering an environment conducive to innovation and its commercialization, much less is known about the optimal design of specific institutions. Regulatory design decisions, and in particular competition policy and intellectual property regimes, can have profoundly positive or negative consequences for economic growth and welfare. However, the ratio of what is known to unknown with respect to the relationship between innovation, competition, and regulatory policy is staggeringly low. In addition to this uncertainty concerning the relationships between regulation, innovation, and economic growth, the process of innovation itself is not well understood.
The regulation of innovation and the optimal design of legal institutions in this environment of uncertainty are two of the most important policy challenges of the 21st century. Any legal regime must attempt to assess the tradeoffs associated with rules that will affect incentives to innovate, allocative efficiency, competition, and freedom of economic actors to commercialize the fruits of their innovative labors and foster economic growth. Unfortunately, as this essay describes, our tools for assessing these tradeoffs are limited.
Any coherent regulatory framework must take account of the low level of empirical knowledge surrounding the complex relationship between regulation – both through competition policy and patent law – and innovation, and the corresponding uncertainty caused by this absence of knowledge. The relationship between regulation and innovation has posed a significant challenge to antitrust economists at least since Schumpeter’s suggestion that dynamic competition would result in “creative destruction,” leading to a competitive process where one monopolist would replace another sequentially as new entrants developed a superior product.
Interfering in this dynamic process for the sake of static efficiency gains is perilous, but, of course, not impossible. But regulators and policy makers must take (more) seriously the condition of fundamental uncertainty in which they act, and the significant costs of their inevitable errors before justifying interventions on grounds of promoting competition or facilitating innovation.
This essay and the chapters in this book, approach this critical set of problems from an economic perspective, relying on the tools of microeconomics, quantitative analysis, and comparative institutional analysis to explore and begin to provide answers to the myriad challenges facing policymakers. The strength of this analysis – often described as the New Institutional Economic approach – is in its recognition that understanding economic performance requires not only economic modeling of narrow behavior, but also an understanding of that behavior in its legal, economic, social, and political institutional context.
Read the full paper here.
