I just wandered down to the local Panera Bread for lunch and picked up someone’s discarded copy of today’s New York Times. One of today’s editorials, F.T.C. Goes AWOL, claims that the Federal Trade Commission “clearly shares the ‘starve the regulators and coddle industry’ philosophy that has driven the Bush administration for seven years.” The evidence? The FTC’s refusal to open a formal investigation into Intel’s loyalty discounts, which are offered to computer makers that minimize the use of processors made by Intel’s rivals.

Read the full piece here. 

I’ve previously hypothesized that the persistence of legal rules that lead to less overall wealth but seemingly more equitable distributions (rules such as the insider trading ban and Regulation FD) may stem from the fact that individuals are “hard-wired” to favor fairness, even if they must sacrifice some wealth to achieve it. That seems to be one of the lessons of the Ultimatum Game, in which offerees routinely sacrifice wealth in order to protest proposed allocations they deem to be unfair. (I describe the Ultimatum Game in the post linked above.)

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Last Wednesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court heard oral argument on whether to reinstate an antitrust lawsuit against taverns around the University of Wisconsin (story here). In 2002, the taverns agreed to eliminate drink specials after 8:00 PM on Fridays and Saturdays. A group of students filed a class action lawsuit against the taverns for injunctive relief and damages, claiming that the agreement constituted an illegal conspiracy in restraint of trade.

Read the full piece here. 

I’ve just posted my latest antitrust article, Weyerhaeuser and the Search for Antitrust’s Holy Grail, to SSRN. Here’s the abstract…

Read the full piece here. 

Within the last few days, the nation’s two most prominent newspapers have reported an interesting trend: businesses are seeking more government regulation. On Sunday, the New York Times ran an article entitled In Turnaround, Industries Seek U.S. Regulation. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal featured Food Makers Get Appetite for Regulation.

Read the full piece here.

The FDA, it seems, is rejecting more new drugs. The agency approved only 61 percent of 2007 drug applications through mid-August, down from 73 percent in the same period last year. A new report by James Kumpel of Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. shows that FDA approvals of drugs made from new chemical compounds are at their lowest level in a decade.

Read the full piece here.

Geoff made all the right arguments on the FTC’s embarrassing effort to thwart the Whole Foods/Wild Oats merger. Indeed, he was one of the first to do so and thereby earned an honored link on Whole Foods’ website.

Read the full piece here.

While the antitrust nerds of the world (including yours truly) have been all atwitter over Leegin’s renunciation of Dr. Miles, another antitrust decision from October Term 2006 may turn out to be more significant in the long run. I’m speaking of Weyerhaeuser Co. v. Ross-Simmons Hardwood Lumber Co., in which the Supreme Court considered whether predatory bidding plaintiffs must make the same two-part showing as predatory pricing plaintiffs (i.e., that the conduct at issue resulted in a below-cost price for the defendant’s products and that there was a dangerous probability that the defendant could recoup its short-term losses by exercising market power once rivals were vanquished). In answering that seemingly narrow question in the affirmative, the Court appears to have taken sides in antitrust’s greatest debate: how to define “exclusionary conduct” under Section 2 of the Sherman Act.

Read the full piece here.

So Dr. Miles is dead. May he rest in peace.

No great surprises in the majority opinion in Leegin. Justice Kennedy, quite rightly, emphasized points we have asserted numerous times on this blog. Most notably…

Read the full piece here.