Recent coverage of the A&P bankruptcy has alluded to its era of “dominance” in grocery retail, describing it as “the Wal-Mart of its day.”   See this earlier post on the unconvincing antitrust case against Wal-Mart.  However, what the A&P bankruptcy brings to mind for me is Justice Stewart’s famous dissent in Von’s Grocery.  The famous line from Stewart’s powerful dissent objecting to the majority’s analysis, devoid of economic analysis and full of now well known contradictions, is his description of the merger law: “the only consistency is that the government always wins.”

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Behavioral law and economics has arisen to international prominence; between Cass Sunstein’s appointment to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs the United Kingdom’s appointment of a “nudge” bureau, behavioralism has enjoyed a meteoric impact on policymakers.  Thus far, behavioral economists have almost exclusively focused on the myriad foibles or purported cognitive errors which hamper consumer decision-making.  These traits include “optimism bias,” the tendency for an individual to underestimate the likelihood of negative results from their behavior, and hyperbolic discounting, where individuals reveal time-inconsistent preferences (often by over-valuing immediate consumption, at least as measured against some third party’s valuation).

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A federal district court judge recently decided an interesting antitrust/ IP case involving “wheel game” slot machines.  IGT sued Bally’s in 2004 for allegedly infringing a number of patents on a “wheel game” slot machine.  Bally’s initially prevailed, winning a pair of summary judgment rulings on the validity of IGT’s patents and refusing to grant summary judgment on Bally’s antitrust counterclaims.

Read the full piece here. 

Today comes news that Senator Kohl has sent a letter to the DOJ urging “careful review” of the proposed Google/ITA merger.  Underlying his concerns (or rather the “concerns raised by a number of industry participants and consumer advocates that I believe warrant careful review”) is this…

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Here we go again.  The European Commission is after Google more formally than a few months ago (but not yet having issued a Statement of Objections).

Read the full piece here. 

We’ve been reading with interest a bit of an blog squabble between Tim Wu and Adam Thierer ( see here and here) set off by Professor Wu’s WSJ column: “In the Grip of the New Monopolists.”  Wu’s column makes some remarkable claims, and, like Adam, we find it extremely troubling.

Read the full piece here.

Carl Shapiro’s (DOJ) speech at the ABA Fall Forum contains (at least) two interesting tidbits worth highlighting for TOTM readers.  The first is a discussion of the DOJ’s case against Blue Cross Blue Shield, which as discussed here, turns on an economic analysis of the use of most-favored nations clauses in contractual arrangements with hospitals…

Read the full piece here. 

The Supreme Court’s ruling in PSKS v. Leegin Creative Leather Products, which reversed Dr. Miles and ended the per se rule for minimum resale price maintenance, remanded the case to the district court to consider claims under the new rule of reason analysis.  On remand, PSKS filed a second amended complaint alleging that independent retailers were involved in the enforcement of Leegin’s RPM scheme and that Leegin (as a participant at the retail level) agreed on the price of Brighton goods.   The second amended complaint also asserted Brighton goods as a single brand market.

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A link to the video is available here.

The video has all of the standard ingredients of a competitor complaint:  (1) a slogan (“Stand with Bob”), (2) anti-corporate rhetoric (“Freedom not Google Profit!”), and (3) appeals to provocative statements from a CEO.   Meanwhile, Google rivals have also turned their attention to Congress.  I suppose the video format is new.

Read the full piece here.