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CoStar – ICLE Editor-in-Chief R.J. Lehmann was quoted by CoStar in a story about the impact of recent spates of natural disasters on the insurance market for commercial properties. You can read full piece here.

“It’s raised alarms for the insurance industry and property owners because now people are thinking about the effects of things like rising ocean levels and the effects that saltwater exposure can have on some of these older properties,” said Ray Lehmann, a Miami-based senior fellow with the International Center for Law & Economics, a nonpartisan and nonprofit research organization that tracks issues including business risks associated with climate change.

Lehmann told CoStar News that commercial property insurers in California generally have more leeway to negotiate pricing with customers than exists in other states, including Florida. But those insurers’ rising costs for their own reinsurance are making it difficult to earn profits from policies without being able to pass on those costs to California commercial customers in the face of escalating wildfire, flooding and other risks.

Lehmann said those risks are also making it difficult for insurers to profit from previously lucrative, high-end commercial and residential policies that were offered for many years in California hubs of the wealthy, like Malibu and Santa Barbara, now increasingly prone to fires and other damaging weather events.

Cowboy State Daily – ICLE Academic Affiliate George Mocsary was quoted by Cowboy State Daily in a story about a U.S. Supreme Court’s order allowing the Biden administration’s regulation of so-called “ghost guns” to remain in force while legal challenges play out. You can read full piece here.

The term “ghost guns” is “kind of silly name. It tends to illicit an emotional reaction rather than an intellectual one,” University of Wyoming law professor George Mocsary, director of UW’s Firearms Research Center.

The Biden administration and others have made “ghost guns” out to be a serious problem because they are supposedly fueling a wave of armed crime with untraceable weapons.

That’s simply not the case, Mocsary said.

“Criminals are not making their own firearms. The equipment to make your own firearm at home isn’t just a small piece of equipment,” he said. “The entire ‘ghost gun’ regulation is just a lot of noise to get attention. The number of those firearms used in crime is miniscule compared to the number of regular firearms used in crimes.”

Axios – ICLE Chief Economist Brian Albrecht was quoted in a story in Axios about the pending merger between supermarkets Kroger and Albertsons. You can read full piece here.

In court, it’s likely to be a “bread-and-butter” argument over market definition, market share nationally and in local markets, and which companies are considered competitors, says Brian Albrecht, chief economist at the International Center for Law & Economics.

…But there’s a good argument that wholesale clubs like Costco, which have been excluded in the past, and Amazon, which operates both online and increasingly physical stores, should also be included as rivals, says Albrecht.

He says that stores located farther away that can now deliver via online-delivery platforms such as Instacart could be added to the list.

Whether Dollar Stores should be included is debatable, Albrecht says.

Townhall – ICLE Chief Economist Brian Albrecht was cited in an op-ed in Townhall about the new merger guidelines. You can read full piece here.

The DOJ and FTC are unequivocally trying to prevent mergers, lowering the bar for what is considered presumptively illegal. The guidelines redefine thresholds, classifying more markets as concentrated while also stating that a market share of over 30 percent presents a threat of undue concentration. The goal, according to economist Brian Albrecht, is to “stop more mergers of every kind without regard for economic argument or recent law.”

Axios – ICLE Chief Economist Brian Albrecht was quoted in a story in Axios in a story about the Federal Trade Commission’s emerging approach to mergers. You can read full piece here.

Brian Albrecht, chief economist at the International Center for Law & Economics, predicts the FTC will challenge the deal in court, but it will be approved based on precedents.

• Precedents suggest the transaction would be assessed through the lens of traditional market definitions, competition within local markets, and which retailers are or are not considered competitors.

Between the lines: While industry watchers like Albrecht predict the transaction gets completed, the source close to the FTC says that view disregards considerations like protecting small businesses.

Arizona Republic – A recent ICLE issue brief on the proposed merger between Kroger and Albertsons was cited by the Arizona Republic. You can read full piece here.

The issue of divesting stores could emerge as a key negotiation point in any legal settlement or agreement with regulators, and this could be a relatively easy issue to resolve, according to a recent analysis of the merger by the nonpartisan International Center for Law & Economics.

…“The upshot is the food and grocery industry is arguably as competitive as it has ever been,” said the report on the merger, written by Brian Albrecht and three other analysts at the International Center for Law and Economics.

…If anything, raising prices would make Kroger and Albertsons stores less appealing against low-cost rivals. The proliferation of wholesale clubs, e-commerce options and other competition “significantly constrains” the supermarkets’ ability to raise prices, argued the report from the International Center for Law & Economics.

…State attorneys general can enforce many federal antitrust laws, and they often sign onto federal lawsuits filed by the the FTC or Justice Department, said Brian Albrecht, one of the authors of the International Center for Law & Economics report.

He predicts the FTC will bring a case and some state AGs will get behind it.

“The FTC will do the heavy lifting on everything, but the AGs can go back to their voters and say they are doing something,” Albrecht said in an email to the Arizona Republic.

The Dispatch – ICLE Chief Economist Brian Albrecht was cited by The Dispatch in a story about the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Justice Department’s new draft merger guidelines. You can read full piece here.

Earlier this year, for example, Albrecht and his colleagues at the International Center for Law and Economics wrote a terrific report documenting some of the biggest “doomsday mergers” that fizzled out – or, like beer industry consolidation, actually improved the market’s competitiveness and consumer surplus – in retrospect. This includes Amazon/Whole Foods, Bayer/Monsanto, Google/Fitbit, Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp, and Ticketmaster/Live Nation. In each case, antitrust hawks wrongly predicted competitive destruction (e.g., Amazon/Whole Foods) or ignored the merger at the time it occurred and only claimed it was an obvious problem years later (e.g., Facebook/Instagram).

Axios – ICLE Chief Economist Brian Albrecht was quoted by Axios in a story about reportedly pending antitrust litigation against Amazon. You can read full piece here.

Ultimately, it’s up to the courts whether they will accept the guideline changes and it will be a point of debate, says Brian Albrecht, chief economist at the International Center for Law & Economics.

Law.com – ICLE Director of Innovation Policy Kristian Stout was quoted by Law.com in a story about the Biden administration’s approach to regulating artificial intelligence. You can read full piece here.

Kristian Stout, director of innovation policy at the nonprofit International Center for Law & Economics, agreed.

“AI intersects with a lot of different regulatory and policy agendas, and it also intersects with a lot of different points of anxiety in the general public that have been percolating over the last 10 or 15 years as tech companies have become more prominent in society,” Stout said.

Stout said that it appears to him that the Biden administration is trying to “gently coerce” Big Tech companies to commit that they will ensure AI products are safe before introducing them to the public, and that they will build systems that put security first and secure the public’s trust.

… While AI already plays a behind-the-scenes role for many Americans through smart devices such as Siri and Alexa or through predicative-text completion on emails, the conversation around AI really seemed to take off with the recent launch of ChatGPT, Stout said.

…“There are things we need to be concerned with. First off, we need to get away from the ‘It’s about to end the world.’ That is totally not a useful thing to think about,” Stout said.

“But we do want to think about ‘Could [ChatGPT] be used to promote more fraud, accelerate spam calls or accelerate fraud on consumers. There’s that potential there. At the same time, you want to start thinking about how can police departments start using facial recognition and advanced analytics to target people that we don’t want them targeting? That’s a valid concern,” Stout said.