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Bloomberg – ICLE Director of Competition Policy Dirk Auer was quoted by Bloomberg in a story about the European Union’s investigation of Google’s ad tech business. You can read full piece here.

“The commission may feel emboldened by the fact that the DOJ is pursuing virtually the same lawsuit, but some might say this is more a case of folie à deux than a healthy working relationship,” said Dirk Auer, Director of Competition Policy at the International Center for Law & Economics.

“The legal obstacles to breaking up Google are tremendous,” he said. “The commission will have to show there was really no other way to solve the issues.”

Associated Press – ICLE Academic Affiliate James Huffman was quoted by the Associated Press in a story about a lawsuit by young plaintiffs who seek to overturn a Montana law that prohibits the consideration of greenhouse-gas emissions in evaluating whether to grant permits. You can read full piece here.

That means a ruling for plaintiffs could increase political pressure on state officials, but it would not have any immediate consequences, said James Huffman, a former professor and dean emeritus at Lewis & Clark Law School who is now living in Montana.

“Republicans in Montana seem pretty fixed in their ways, and I don’t think a decision by this district court is going to change the way that they think about these issues,” Huffman said

Fortune – ICLE Chief Economist Brian Albrecht was quoted by Fortune in a story about the ongoing debate over so-called “greedflation.” You can read full piece here.

Mainstream economists argue the new profit-led inflation concept is merely a matter of semantics, however. They say their peers are just describing the “standard cyclical component to profits” that occurs during business cycles, as Brian Albrecht, chief economist at the International Center for Law & Economics, a non-profit, non-partisan research center, told Fortune last week. But Albert Edwards, a global strategist at the French investment bank Société Générale, is sticking by his theory that greedflation has been a key driver of the surge in consumer prices over the past few years.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram – ICLE Academic Affiliate Andrew Morriss was quoted by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in a story about the State of Texas’ use of eminent domain to seize a developer’s 5,000-acre property. You can read full piece here.

Under eminent domain laws, entities including the state government can seize private property if it is for the public benefit. Andrew Morriss, a professor at Texas A&M’s School of Law and The Bush School of Government and Public Service, said that a state park is firmly within the scope of the public benefit.

“It’s like one of the obvious examples that are used in textbooks,” Morriss said. “Highways, parks, firehouses — that’s what eminent domain is for.”

…“The only thing he can argue with the state about is how much they have to pay him for the property,” Morriss said. “There’s no way he can stop them from taking the property.”

…Morriss, the A&M professor, said that the state is only required to pay a fair market price for Todd’s property. There may be some wiggle room for Todd to argue that he should also be reimbursed money that he’s invested into the property, or any money he spent to improve the property. But because Todd Interests purchased the land so recently, it’s already clear how much it’s worth on the market.

“The starting point for the discussion would be how much he paid,” Morriss said. “I think it’s very likely the state will pay him what he paid, possibly plus a little bit more to make up for expenses that he’s incurred.”

 

RealClearMarkets – ICLE Director of Competition Policy Dirk Auer was cited in an op-ed at RealClearMarkets by David McGarry of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance about the European Union’s Digital Markets Act. You can read full piece here.

Moreover, despite the agitation of pro-DMA technocrats, self-preferencing often benefits large platforms’ small competitors. “Platforms that preference their own products frequently end up increasing the total market’s value by growing the share of users of a particular product,” writes Dirk Auer, director of competition policy at the International Center for Law & Economics. “Those that preference inferior products end up hurting their attractiveness to users of their ‘core’ product, exposing themselves to competition from rivals.”

Fortune – ICLE Chief Economist Brian Albrecht was quoted by Fortune in a story about the degree to which rising corporate profits are to blame for inflation. You can read full piece here.

“There’s a standard cyclical component to profits,” Brian Albrecht, chief economist at the International Center for Law & Economics, a non-profit, non-partisan research center, told Fortune.

Despite the jarring statistical incongruity, he said, “this is business as usual for the economy,” arguing that corporate profits are returning to trend, just like they typically do as business cycles mature. But to really understand why profits are falling you have to rewind to the brief but devastating recession caused by the pandemic just three years ago.

…Profits tend to rise as economies come out of recessions, according to Albrecht, because demand increases and supply can’t keep up. That, in turn, drives up prices and enables corporations to increase margins.

…Both Leer and Albrecht said they also believe profits will continue to sink this year, but not to the extent that many forecasters on Wall Street are claiming.“I think it would take a real mess-up from the Fed to get that kind of drop in profits,” Albrecht said, arguing that scenario is only likely if Fed officials decide to jack up rates dramatically from here.

…Both Leer and Albrecht, however, stand firmly against the Greedflation theory. They believe the rise of profits in 2020 and 2021 was purely a result of supply and demand imbalances in an economy that was flooded with fiscal and monetary stimulus while supply chains were fractured.

But, like Edwards, Albrecht noted that corporate profits’ sharp rise in late 2020 and 2021 could mean that the recent drop in profits is merely a return to trend, and a recession isn’t imminent.

“Very rapidly falling profits are a sign of recession, but I don’t know if this qualifies as that. You have to remember exactly how dramatic the profit rise was in 2020 and ‘21. So I’m not immediately concerned. They’re falling from that extreme peak. Maybe they’re just falling back to the normal business cycle setup,” he said.

The Stanford Daily – ICLE Academic Affiliate Wesley Hartmann was quoted in a story in The Stanford Daily in a story about efforts to improve California farmers’ water usage. You can read full piece here.

Wesley Hartmann, a professor of marketing at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, has recently begun working with the team to integrate their algorithms with soil sensor and drip irrigation technology. He believes that the biggest challenge for scaling such technology is that the majority of drip irrigation in the world is concentrated in California, so expanding the reach of this sustainable irrigation model would mean expanding the use of drip irrigation techniques along with the use of these algorithms worldwide.

“Once we understand a little bit better how the farmers set their drip timers, and what technology they use, we need to find partners to be able to work with it,” Hartmann said.

With his experience in smart irrigation in the residential sector, Hartmann hopes to work with the researchers to integrate their algorithms into current drip irrigation and soil sensor technology.  So far, drip irrigation and soil sensor technology has not been focused on optimizing water use.

JD Supra – ICLE Academic Affiliate Thibault Schrepel was cited in a story in JD Supra in a story about the Luxembourg Competition Authority commissioning him to launch a market study into the blockchain sector. You can read full piece here.

The LCA will collaborate with Professor Thibault Schrepel on the study, which has the following goals:

1. To document Web3 dynamism and its competitive landscape,
2. To assess where and how Web2 companies compete with Web3 projects,
3. To map existing interactions between Web2 companies and Web3 projects, and
4. To document potential implemented anticompetitive practices against Web3 projects.

Professor Schrepel has written extensively on the intersection of blockchain technology and antitrust laws. In January 2023, Professor Schrepel published a paper analyzing the complex relationship between Web2 and Web3 firms, which may provide insight into the focus of the LCA’s market study. Noting that Web3 firms rely on Web2’s infrastructure and platforms, Professor Schrepel’s paper focuses on two potential areas for anticompetitive conduct by Web2 firms. First, Professor Schrepel argues that Web2 firms could impede competition from Web3 projects by limiting access to necessary web infrastructure, including computational power and storage capacity, Web3 code and websites, and Web2 communication protocols. Second, Professor Schrepel argues that Web2 firms could impede adoption of Web3 projects by preventing access to Web2 hardware and software, and by banning or limiting the use of Web3 assets on Web2 platforms.

Per the LCA’s announcement, the LCA and Professor Schrepel will contact various industry participants in the coming weeks. The LCA has not indicated when it expects to complete its study or if it plans to issue a report based on its findings.

 

Daily Torch – ICLE research on payment markets and the effects of the Durbin amendment was cited in an op-ed in the Daily Torch by Rick Manning of Americans for Limited Government. You can read full piece here.

In fact, a 2017 study by the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE), found that big box stores like Target were the big winners from the Durbin debit card processing fees amendment, and main street stores along with lower income consumers were the losers.

And a previous 2014 analysis by ICLE also found that “although the Durbin Amendment had generated benefits for large box retailers, it had harmed many other merchants, especially those specializing in small-ticket items, and imposed substantial net costs on the majority of consumers, especially those from lower-income households.”

The 2017 ICLE study also found “… that the passage of time has not ameliorated the harm to bank customers from the Durbin Amendment; to the contrary, earlier adverse trends have solidified or worsened. Nor do we find any indication that matters have improved for small merchants or retail consumers: Although large merchants continue to reap a Durbin Amendment windfall, there remains no evidence that small merchants have realized any cost savings — indeed, many have suffered cost increases. Nor is there any evidence that merchants have lowered prices for retail consumers; for many small-ticket items, in fact, prices have been driven up. Finally, we identify a new trend that was not apparent when we examined the data three years ago: Contrary to our findings then, the two-tier system of interchange fee regulation (which exempts issuing banks with under $10 billion in assets) no longer appears to be protecting smaller banks from the Durbin Amendment’s adverse effects.”