In recent years, antitrust scholars have largely agreed on a couple of propositions involving tying and bundled discounting. With respect to tying (selling one’s monopoly “tying” product only on the condition that buyers also purchase another “tied” product), scholars from both the Chicago and Harvard Schools of antitrust analysis have generally concluded that there should be no antitrust liability unless the tie-in results in substantial foreclosure of marketing opportunities in the tied product market. Absent such foreclosure, scholars have reasoned, truly anticompetitive harm is unlikely to occur. The prevailing liability rule, however, condemns tie-ins without regard to whether they occasion substantial tied market foreclosure.

With respect to bundled discounting (selling a package of products for less than the aggregate price of the products if purchased separately), scholars have generally concluded that there should be no antitrust liability if the discount at issue could be matched by an equally efficient single-product rival of the discounter. That will be the case if each product in the bundle is priced above cost after the entire bundled discount is attributed to that product. Antitrust scholars have therefore generally endorsed a safe harbor for bundled discounts that are “above cost” under a “discount attribution test.”

In an article appearing in the December 2009 Harvard Law Review, Harvard law professor Einer Elhauge challenged each of these near-consensus propositions. According to Elhauge, the conclusion that significant tied market foreclosure should be a prerequisite to tying liability stems from scholars’ naïve acceptance of the Chicago School’s “single monopoly profit” theory. Elhauge insists that the theory is infirm and that instances of tying may occasion anticompetitive “power” (i.e., price discrimination) effects even if they do not involve substantial tied market foreclosure. He maintains that the Supreme Court has deemed such effects to be anticompetitive and that it was right to do so.

With respect to bundled discounting, Elhauge calls for courts to forego price-cost comparisons in favor of a rule that asks whether the defendant seller has “coerced” consumers into buying the bundle by first raising its unbundled monopoly (“linking”) product price above the “but-for” level that would prevail absent the bundled discounting scheme and then offering a discount from that inflated level.

I have just posted to SSRN an article criticizing Elhauge’s conclusions on both tying and bundled discounting. On tying, the article argues, Elhauge makes both descriptive and normative mistakes. As a descriptive matter, Supreme Court precedent does not deem the so-called power effects (each of which was well-known to Chicago School scholars) to be anticompetitive. As a normative matter, such effects should not be regulated because they tend to enhance total social welfare, especially when one accounts for dynamic efficiency effects. Because tying can create truly anticompetitive effect only when it involves substantial tied market foreclosure, such foreclosure should be a prerequisite to liability.

On bundled discounting, I argue, Elhauge’s proposed rule would be a disaster. The rule fails to account for the fact that bundled discounts may create immediate consumer benefit even if the seller has increased unbundled linking prices above but-for levels. It is utterly inadministrable and would chill procompetitive instances of bundled discounting. It is motivated by a desire to prevent “power” effects that are not anticompetitive under governing Supreme Court precedent (and should not be deemed so). Accordingly, courts should reject Elhauge’s proposed rule in favor of an approach that first focuses on the genuine prerequisite to discount-induced anticompetitive harm—“linked” market foreclosure—and then asks whether any such foreclosure is anticompetitive in that it could not be avoided by a determined competitive rival. To implement such a rule, courts would need to apply the discount attribution test.

The paper is a work-in-progress. Herbert Hovenkamp has already given me a number of helpful comments, which I plan to incorporate shortly. In the meantime, I’d love to hear what TOTM readers think.

Filed under: antitrust, bundled discounts, economics, error costs, exclusionary conduct, law and economics, price discrimination, regulation, SSRN, tying

I have submitted a comment to the Federal Reserve Board concerning Regulation II, along with the American Enterprise Institute’s Alex Brill, Christopher DeMuth, Alex J. Pollock, and Peter Wallison, as well as my George Mason colleague Todd Zywicki.  Regulation II implements the interchange fee provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act.

The comment makes a rather straightforward and simple point:

We write to express our concern that the Federal Reserve Board has not to date taken the prudent and, importantly, legally required step of conducting a competitive impact analysis of Regulation II, which implements the interchange fee provisions of section 1075 of the Dodd-Frank Act (Pub L. 111-203). We consider this to be one of the most significant legal changes to the payment system’s competitive landscape since the Electronic Funds Transfer Act in 1978. This dramatic statutory and subsequent regulatory change will undoubtedly trigger a complex set of consequences for all firms participating in the payment system as well as for consumers purchasing both retail goods and financial services. The Federal Reserve’s obligation to conduct a competitive impact analysis of Regulation II is an appropriate and prudent safeguard against legal change with potentially pernicious consequences for the economy and consumers. Given the Board’s own well-crafted standards, we do not believe it is appropriate for the Board to move forward in implementing Regulation II without the required competitive impact analysis.

The rest of the comment appears below the fold.

The Board’s bulletin setting forth its role in the payments system lays out the policy that the Fed is supposed to follow “when considering … a legal change … if that change would have a direct and material adverse effect on the ability of other service providers to compete effectively with the Federal Reserve in providing similar services due to differing legal powers or constraints or due to a dominant marketing position deriving from such legal differences.” The bulletin explicitly promises that “[a]ll operational or legal changes having a substantial effect on payments system participants will be subject to a
competitive-impact analysis even if the competitive effects are not apparent on the face of the proposal.”

There is little doubt that Regulation II qualifies for the required competitive impact analysis by this standard as it will likely have a “substantial effect on payment system participants.” Further, several aspects of the proposal impose “differing constraints” on different institutions. The proposal, for example, exempts Fed-sponsored payment systems such as the A C H system from the scope of the regulation while sweeping in alternate payment providers, even though such provider systems are functionally indistinguishable in relevant respect.

The bulletin goes on to provide details of the required competitive impact analysis. For example, the Board must “first determine whether the proposal has a direct and material adverse effect on the ability of other service providers to compete effectively with the Federal Reserve in providing similar services.” If so, the Board must then “ascertain whether the adverse effect is due to legal differences or due to a dominant market position deriving from such legal differences.” If legal differences or a dominant market position deriving from those legal differences are detected, the analysis must then turn to assessing the benefits of the proposed legal change and determining whether those benefits could be “reasonably achieved with a lesser or no adverse competitive impact.” Indeed, the bulletin indicates that “the Board would then either modify the proposal to lessen or eliminate the adverse impact on competitors’ ability to compete or determine that the payments system objectives may not be reasonably achieved if the proposal were modified.” As the bulletin anticipates, such a detailed and careful analysis is fully appropriate to better understand the competitive impact of a significant legal change in the payment system before it is implemented.

As Federal Reserve Board Governor Sarah Bloom Raskin observed in recent Congressional testimony, “Commenters also have differing perspectives on the potential effect of the statute and the proposed rule on consumers,” and “the magnitude of the ultimate effect is not clear and will depend on the behavior of various participants in the debit card networks.”

We agree with Governor Raskin’s observations and conclude that an economic impact analysis of the competitive effects of Regulation II, while a complex endeavor, is a critical one to protect competition in the payment system and consumers. We urge the Board to conduct an impact analysis of Regulation II and to make this analysis available for public comment before implementation of Regulation II.

Interesting readers can search for other comments here.

Filed under: banking, consumer financial protection bureau, consumer protection, credit cards, economics, regulation

My good friend and coauthor John E. (Jack) Calfee died suddenly of a heart attack last month. He was bon in 1941 and was 69 years old.

Read the full piece here. 

Congressman Waxman shares that the news that the DOJ Antitrust Division told him that cable or phone companies violating net neutrality principles with exclusive or discriminatory deals are not violating the antitrust laws:

Waxman said during a net neutrality hearing Wednesday that Justice officials informed his office that existing competition laws cannot be used to prevent cable and phone companies from blocking Web traffic.

“DoJ told us that … antitrust does not stop a phone or cable company from blocking websites that don’t pay for access,” said Waxman, the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee.

“According to DoJ, favoring websites that pay high fees and degrading websites that don’t is perfectly legal under the antitrust laws as long as the phone or cable company isn’t in direct competition with the websites being degraded.”

Filed under: antitrust, net neutrality, technology

Tomorrow I will be attending a symposium on small business financing sponsored by the Entrepreneurial Business Law Journal‘s at the Moritz College of Law at the Ohio State University. I’m on a panel entitled “Recessionary Impacts on Equity Capital,” which is a bit misleading–or at least a bit different that the topic I offered to speak on, which is the effect of the recession and recent financial crisis on small business financing more generally. The rest of the day includes presentations governmental and policy responses to the crisis and practical implications of constricted capital. A copy of the schedule and list of speakers is available. I’m not very familiar with any of the other panelists, but the luncheon address will be given by Al Martinez-Fonts, Executive Vice President, U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

I’m going to focus on a few basic points and highlight some of the myths around small businesses and small business financing that drives poor policy. My first objective is to lay out a simple framework for thinking about financing deals, or any deal for that matter. Namely, the idea that every transaction involves allocations of value, uncertainty and decision rights; and the deal itself provides structure on those allocations by specifying the incentive systems, performance measures and decision rights that address both parties’ interests. How those structures are designed determine the nature of risk exposure and incentive conflicts that may affect the ex post value and performance of the deal.

In a sense, there is nothing new in small business financing post-crisis.  The fundamentals are the same. There is a multitude of contractual terms to address the various kinds of incentive issues and uncertainties that exist in the current market environment. To the extent there is anything truly unique about the current context, they are less about the financial market itself than about broader regulatory and economic issues. For example, much of the uncertainty affecting credit-worthiness have to do with economic and cash flow uncertainties stemming from upheavals in the regulatory landscape for small businesses, including health care. Uncertainty concerning implementation of financial market reforms passed in July 2010 create uncertainties for lenders. These uncertainties exacerbate the usual economic uncertainties of new and small businesses during an economic recovery period.

During the recession itself, “stimulus” spending distorted the credit-worthiness of small businesses in industries that were more directly benefited by government handouts and by the security provided small businesses that supply large, publicly-administered and guaranteed businesses (such as in the auto industry).  Thus, federal and state economic policy to “create jobs” in some sectors distorted the incentives to lend to different groups of small businesses, likely reducing employment in other sectors.

Finally, I’m going to suggest that talking about “small business” financing is a misnomer if we are truly motivated by a care of job creation. A recent paper by John Haltiwanger, Ron Jarmin, and Javier Miranda illustrates that business size is not the key determinant of job creation in the US, as is often argued in the media and policy circles. (HT: Peter Klein at O&M) They find that it is young firms, which happen to be small, not small firms in general that provide the job creation. Ironically, these young firms are also the ones for whom financing is most difficult due to the nascent stage of development and uncertainty. Thus, policies directed to firms based on size alone further distort capital availability from other (larger) companies that are equally likely to create jobs. Since this distortion is not costless, the policies are not welfare-neutral by simply switching where jobs are created, but likely to reduce welfare overall.

So now you don’t need to rush to Columbus, Ohio, to hear what I’ll have to say–unless you want to see the fireworks in person. But now you’ll know what’s going on in case there is news of more upset around the horse shoe in Columbus.

Filed under: financial regulation, markets, regulation, Sykuta

Ed Whelan chimes in on the perennial debate with the most recent data:

Those sneaky “corporatist” justices are at it again, cleverly disguising their biases by ruling in favor of employees and/or against corporations in two Supreme Court decisions issued today:

1. In Staub v. Proctor Hospital, the Court, reversing the Seventh Circuit, ruled unanimously that an employer could be held liable for employment discrimination based on the discriminatory animus of an employee who influenced, but did not make, the ultimate employment decision. Justice Scalia wrote the lead opinion.

2. In FCC v. AT&T, the Court, in a unanimous opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, ruled that corporations do not have “personal privacy” for purposes of a Freedom of Information Act exemption. The ruling reversed a Third Circuit decision.

In the third decision rendered today, Henderson v. Shinseki, the Court also ruled unanimously for the “little guy,” as it held, in an opinion by Justice Alito, that a 120-day deadline for a veteran to appeal an administrative denial of benefits did not amount to an absolute jurisdictional bar. The Court reversed a contrary ruling by the Federal Circuit.

(Justice Kagan did not take part in any of these cases.)

I’ve discussed the analytical incoherence of these “pro-business bias” claims in the antitrust context here and here; in that context, the argument is commonly raised but usually avoid serious claims that any specific decision was wrongly decided.

In somewhat related news, the Supreme Court denied cert in another patent settlement case, Louisiana Wholesale Drug Co., Inc., et al. v. Bayer AG, et al.  WSJ has more.

Filed under: antitrust, Supreme Court

The Supreme Court denied cert in both S&M Brands v. Caldwell and Wine Country Gift Baskets v. Steen.  I had participated in drafting amicus briefs, along with my colleague Todd Zywicki, supporting certiorari in each.  The briefs are available here and here.  Maybe I’ll have better luck next year.

Filed under: 21st amendment, alcohol, antitrust, cartels, Supreme Court, wine

Joshua Gans has an interesting post examining potential antitrust issues involving Apple, an issue we’ve discussed here and here.  Gans focuses in on the two most relevant issues:

There are two aspects that might raise antitrust concern: (i) Apple’s exclusivity-like requirement that no external payment links be permitted in apps and (ii) Apple’s most-favored customer clause preventing discounting on other platforms. Let’s examine each in turn.

In my earlier post, I emphasized that a potential plaintiff would have a difficult time demonstrating that Apple has monopoly power in any relevant market for the purposes of antitrust analysis.  Both exclusivity arrangements and most-favored customer clauses can generate efficiencies and improve consumer outcomes; they pose little threat to competition and consumers in the absence of durable monopoly power.  I suggested that this was the largest obstacle to any antitrust analysis involving Apple’s subscription model:

The most often discussed bar to an antitrust action against Apple is the one many regulators simply assume into existence: Apple must have market power in an antitrust-relevant market.  While Apple’s share of the smartphone market is only 16% or so, its share of the tablet computing market is much larger.  The WSJ, for example, reports that Apple accounts for about three-fourths of tablet computer sales.  I’ve noted before in the smartphone context that this requirement should not be consider a bar to FTC suit, given the availability of Section 5; however, as the WSJ explains, market definition must be a critical issue in any Apple investigation or lawsuit:

Publishers, for example, might claim that Apple dominates the market for consumer tablet computers and that it has allegedly used that commanding position to restrict competition. Apple, in turn, might define the market to include all digital and print media, and counter that any publisher not happy with Apple’s terms is free to still reach its customers through many other print and digital outlets.

One must conduct a proper, empirically-grounded analysis of the relevant data to speak with confidence; however, it suffices to say that I am skeptical that tablet sales would constitute a relevant market.

Gans agrees, also suggesting that lack of monopoly power undercuts any potential antitrust case against Apple.

Exclusivity can be an issue as it might harm other platforms that might want to sell digital subscriptions. If Apple’s exclusivity means that those platforms cannot generate sales, then a monopoly platform may arise or be sustained. But that is the issue here: where is Apple’s monopoly? It is arguable that Apple has a monopoly over tablet devices and has had that monopoly now for almost 11 months since it first released its iPad. But if a publisher decided not to sell subscriptions for iPad users, it would have other options: particularly the options it had prior to April 2010; web based subscriptions and eReader subscriptions, not to mention physical subscriptions that fall outside of Apple’s terms. It would have to be demonstrated that the iPad was one of the few or the only way to access a particular customer class to believe that publishers were excluded by Apple’s terms. In any case, those terms are not strictly exclusionary as they do not prevent other digital subscription sales – even for iPad access. Instead, they at worst, raise the costs of those other sales. To be sure, raising costs can sometimes be an antitrust violation but the degree of market power a firm would have to possess to make that the case has to be proportionate. Right now, that case appears weak.

Most-favored customer clauses arise when the terms of one supply contract impose conditions on other contracts a party might enter into. Apple is effectively preventing discounting elsewhere. If it did not do this, then that discounting would occur and Apple may be unable to generate as much in sales. Worse than that, Apple may do the hard work of signing consumers up for initial subscriptions only to have those same consumers contacted outside of those arrangements with discounts.

But such clauses can have the effect of raising prices in the market and this is what might concern antitrust authorities. For this to be likely to occur here, Apple must have a requisite degree of power (so that publishers are forced to accept those terms) and it must be the case that prices actually rise. It is too early to tell but if Apple is right and iPad consumers really do purchase more, then it is possible that the price elasticity of demand from iPad consumers is relatively high; that is, charge $10 to an iPad consumer and you generate many more sales than $10 charged for other types of consumers. In this environment, it is not obvious that the iPad will lead to higher digital subscription prices.

My only quibble with Gans’ post is that he appears to describe the “monopoly power” requirement as a problem for antitrust, rather than a sensible requirement that protects consumers from overdeterrence.  For example, Gans writes that “antitrust law, as it currently stands, has difficulty in dealing with industries whereby the path is towards monopoly and how to act prospectively about it.”   Gans does not suggest that the antitrust authorities should bring a case against Apple on these grounds.   But he does seem to imply that antitrust would be more effective if it were more willing to reach business conduct that is not harming consumers, may well be providing significant efficiencies currently, but might generate future harm.   I’m not sure this is what he means or if I’m misinterpreting.  If I’m right, I would have characterized things quite differently, perhaps along the lines of “antitrust law is not willing to sacrifice current gains to consumers for the sake of prohibiting practices that are not currently harming competition and the basis for predicting future harm is speculative, at best.”

Potential minor quibble aside, its a very good post and well worth reading.

Filed under: antitrust, economics, MFNs, monopolization, technology

Professor Bainbridge isn’t fond of empirical legal scholarship; more significantly, he asserts that law professors trained to pursue it fundamentally undercut the purposes of legal academia.  (His judgment on legal academics which moonlight as amateur statisticians remains to be seen.)  Professor Bainbridge has for some time criticized empirical legal scholarship – but now he targets legal scholars themselves.  Stated another way, Professor Bainbridge claims that empirical legal scholars depress the quality of legal education by fusing an underdeveloped corpus of legal knowledge to a second-rate grasp of an extra-legal discipline.  The provocative claims in Professor Bainbridge’s recent National Journal article do not end there.

Read the full piece here.