One of the hottest topics in antitrust these days is institutional investors’ common ownership of the stock of competing firms. Large investment companies like BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, and Fidelity offer index and actively managed mutual funds that are invested in thousands of companies. In many concentrated industries, these institutional investors are “intra-industry diversified,” meaning that they hold stakes in all the significant competitors within the industry.

Read the full piece here.

Ours is not an age of nuance.  It’s an age of tribalism, of teams—“Yer either fer us or agin’ us!”  Perhaps I should have been less surprised, then, when I read the unfavorable review of my book How to Regulate in, of all places, the Federalist Society Review.

Read the full piece here.

Summary

A recent tweet by Lina Khan, discussing yesterday’s American Express decision, exemplifies an unfortunate trend in contemporary antitrust discourse.  Khan wrote:

The economists cited by the Second Circuit (whose opinion SCOTUS affirms) for the analysis of ‘two-sided’ [markets] all had financial links to the credit card sector, as we point out in FN 4 [link to amicus brief].

Her implicit point—made more explicitly in the linked brief, which referred to the economists’ studies as “industry-funded”—was that economic analysis should be discounted if the author has ever received compensation from a firm that might benefit from the proffered analysis.

There are two problems with this reasoning.  First, it’s fallacious.  An ad hominem argument, one addressed “to the person” rather than to the substance of the person’s claims, is a fallacy of irrelevance, sometimes known as a genetic fallacy.  Biased people may make truthful claims, just as unbiased people may get things wrong.  An idea’s “genetics” are irrelevant.  One should assess the substance of the actual idea, not the identity of its proponent.

Second, the reasoning ignores that virtually everyone is biased in some way.  In the antitrust world, those claiming that we should discount the findings and theories of industry-connected experts urging antitrust modesty often stand to gain from having a “bigger” antitrust.

In the common ownership debate about which Mike Sykuta and I have recently been blogging, proponents of common ownership restrictions have routinely written off contrary studies by suggesting bias on the part of the studies’ authors.  All the while, they have ignored their own biases:  If their proposed policies are implemented, their expertise becomes exceedingly valuable to plaintiff lawyers and to industry participants seeking to traverse a new legal minefield.

At the end of our recent paper, The Case for Doing Nothing About Institutional Investors’ Common Ownership of Small Stakes in Competing Firms, Mike and I wrote, “Such regulatory modesty will prove disappointing to those with a personal interest in having highly complex antitrust doctrines that are aggressively enforced.”  I had initially included a snarky footnote, but Mike, who is far nicer than I, convinced me to remove it.

I’ll reproduce it here in the hopes of reducing the incidence of antitrust ad hominem.

Professor Elhauge has repeatedly discounted criticisms of the common ownership studies by suggesting that critics are biased.  See, e.g., Elhauge, supra note 26, at 1 (observing that “objections to my analysis have been raised in various articles, some funded by institutional investors with large horizontal shareholdings”); id. at 3 (“My analysis of executive compensation has been critiqued in a paper by economic consultants O’Brien and Waehrer that was funded by the Investment Company Institute, which represents institutional investors and was headed for the last three years by the CEO of Vanguard.”); Elhauge, supra note 124, at 3 (observing that airline and banking studies “have been critiqued in other articles, some funded by the sort of institutional investors that have large horizontal shareholdings”); id. at 17 (“The Investment Company Institute, an association of institutional investors that for the preceding three years was headed by the CEO of Vanguard, has funded a couple of papers to critique the empirical study showing an adverse link between horizontal shareholding and airline prices.”); id. (observing that co-authors of critique “both have significant experience in the airline industry because they consulted either for the airlines or the DOJ on airline mergers that were approved notwithstanding high levels of horizontal shareholding”); id. at 19 (“The Investment Company Institute has responded by funding a second critique of the airline study.”); id. at 23-24 (“Even to the extent that such studies are not directly funded by industry, when an industry has been viewed as benign for a long time, confirmation bias is a powerful force that will incline many to interpret any data to find no adverse effects.”).  He fails, however, to acknowledge his own bias.  As a professor of antitrust law at one of the nation’s most prestigious law schools, he has an interest in having antitrust be as big and complicated as possible: The more complex the doctrine, and the broader its reach, the more valuable a preeminent antitrust professor’s expertise becomes.  This is not to suggest that one should discount the assertions of Professor Elhauge or other proponents of restrictions on common ownership.  It is simply to observe that bias is unavoidable and that the best approach is therefore to evaluate claims according to their substance, not according to who is asserting them.

Summary

While the three-step burden-shifting framework for evaluating antitrust cases under the rule of reason is conceptually well-accepted and understood, case law remains unclear regarding what suffices to satisfy each party’s burden at each of the three stages. This case offers the Court an opportunity both to clarify what constitutes harm to competition and to explain the nature of the shifting burdens in rule of reason analysis.

In their merits briefing, rather than offer tools for providing structure to the rule of reason, Petitioners urge the Court to adopt an amorphous standard that would permit plaintiffs to satisfy their burden without evidence of durable market power— and even without direct proof of anticompetitive effects as the term is traditionally and properly understood in Section 1 jurisprudence. Acquiescing to Petitioners’ vague conception of a plaintiff’s prima facie burden would untether antitrust law from rigorous economic analysis and harm consumers by increasing significantly the risk of error in lower courts. This would leave litigants with little to no certainty regarding what evidence they should introduce, let alone what evidence a court would find persuasive in any given case, and no clarity as to what businesses can and cannot do.

Without an approach to establishing plaintiff’s burden disciplined by economic analysis and proof, the balance of false positive (Type I) and false negative (Type II) errors—which is critical to proper adjudication of the antitrust laws—would be thrown off keel. The fundamental goal of antitrust law is to foster consumer welfare by enhancing or increasing output in a relevant market. Output is the touchstone of antitrust analysis because a dominant firm’s ability to constrain market-wide output is what allows it to anticompetitively raise prices and harm consumers. Petitioners’ approach, however, would flip this analysis on its head and allow price effects to dictate results, thereby permitting courts to ignore output effects—the sine qua non of antitrust analysis—in ascertaining whether a plaintiff satisfied its prima facie burden.

Such a result is contrary to this Court’s precedent and particularly problematic here. This Court has recognized that vertical restraints might “[increase prices] in the course of promoting procompetitive effects.” Leegin Creative Leather Prods., Inc. v. PSKS, Inc., 551 U.S. 877, 895-96 (2007) (citing Bus. Elecs. Corp. v. Sharp Elecs. Corp., 485 U.S. 717, 728 (1988)). And modern economics provides no basis for assuming that a demonstration of price effects on only one side of a two-sided market accurately represents the market-wide effects of a course of conduct. Rather, economics predicts that market-wide welfare might increase, decrease, or remain neutral given price effects on a single side. Only an analysis of the market as a whole can illuminate the true competitive implications.

This brief explains amici’s understanding of the relevant economic analysis. It explains why basic economic principles underlying the analysis of multi-sided markets lead to the conclusion that a plaintiff should be required to demonstrate, at a minimum, that: (1) the allegedly unlawful restraint caused anticompetitive effects in the form of actual or probable restricted output market-wide—a showing that logically requires analyzing both sides of a two-sided market; and (2) the defendant had sufficient market power to restrict output in a properly defined market. These two requirements align with sound economics and would also provide clear guidance for courts in applying the rule of reason.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will soon vote on whether to repeal an Obama-era rule classifying Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as “common carriers.” That rule was put in place to achieve net neutrality, an attractive-sounding goal that many Americans—millennials especially—reflexively support.

Read the full piece here.

So I’ve just finished writing a book (hence my long hiatus from Truth on the Market).  Now that the draft is out of my hands and with the publisher (Cambridge University Press), I figured it’s a good time to rejoin my colleagues here at TOTM.  To get back into the swing of things, I’m planning to produce a series of posts describing my new book, which may be of interest to a number of TOTM readers.  I’ll get things started today with a brief overview of the project.

Read the full piece here.

Summary

Petitioners base their First Amendment argument on two premises: first, that surcharges are “more effective” than discounts at altering consumer behavior; and second, that surcharges and discounts are economically equivalent except for their labels. Under this view, because the only difference between discounts and surcharges is how they are framed, it must be this framing that leads to the difference in consumers’ responses. To explain why Petitioners believe this is true—and, thus, to maintain their claim that New York’s surcharge prohibition is an impermissible restriction on speech—Petitioners and their amici rely on the behavioral economic concepts of “framing” and “loss aversion.” They claim that the State impermissibly wishes to prohibit surcharging because these cognitive biases render surcharge labels more effective than discount labels in altering consumers’ preferred form of payment.

Petitioners’ premises are wrong. There is no sound evidence that the asserted behavioral theories are at work here, or that credit-card surcharging— much less the mere label used to describe the practice—more greatly affects consumers’ chosen method of payment than cash discounting. In fact, some of the studies on which Petitioners and their amici rely suggest the opposite. The Court should not rely, in the absence of sound supporting evidence, on a malleable theory that can be used to support contradictory positions.

Moreover, surcharges and discounts differ in material ways beyond the words used to describe them. Surcharging—but not discounting—enables merchants to engage in certain pricing and sales practices that explain both consumers’ different responses to them, as well as the State’s interest in regulating them differently. And while petitioners lack empirical support for the behavioral claims at the heart of their First Amendment argument, the evidence from countries that permit surcharging reveals that merchants often use surcharges to engage in these types of pricing practices. This Court should thus reject Petitioners’ invitation to base constitutional doctrine on a behavioral hypothesis unsupported by any sound empirical evidence—especially where, as here, that result could potentially expose consumers to the type of conduct that the State’s law seeks to prevent.

Alden Abbott and I recently co-authored an article, forthcoming in the Journal of Competition Law and Economics, in which we examined the degree to which the Supreme Court and the federal enforcement agencies have recognized the inherent limits of antitrust law. We concluded that the Roberts Court has admirably acknowledged those limits and has for the most part crafted liability rules that will maximize antitrust’s social value. The enforcement agencies, by contrast, have largely ignored antitrust’s intrinsic limits. In a number of areas, they have sought to expand antitrust’s reach in ways likely to reduce consumer welfare.

The bright spot in federal antitrust enforcement in the last few years has been Josh Wright. Time and again, he has bucked the antitrust establishment, reminding the mandarins that their goal should not be to stop every instance of anticompetitive behavior but instead to optimize antitrust by minimizing the sum of error costs (from both false negatives and false positives) and decision costs. As Judge Easterbrook famously explained, and as Josh Wright has emphasized more than anyone I know, inevitable mistakes (error costs) and heavy information requirements (decision costs) constrain what antitrust can do. Every liability rule, every defense, every immunity doctrine should be crafted with those limits in mind.

Josh will no doubt be remembered, and justifiably so, for spearheading the effort to provide guidance on how the Federal Trade Commission will exercise its amorphous authority to police “unfair methods of competition.” Several others have lauded Josh’s fine contribution on that matter (as have I), so I won’t gild that lily here. Instead, let me briefly highlight two other areas in which Josh has properly pushed for a recognition of antitrust’s inherent limits.

Vertical Restraints

Vertical restraints—both intrabrand restraints like resale price maintenance (RPM) and interbrand restraints like exclusive dealing—are a competitive mixed bag. Under certain conditions, such restraints may reduce overall market output, causing anticompetitive harm. Under other, more commonly occurring conditions, vertical restraints may enhance market output. Empirical evidence suggests that most vertical restraints are output-enhancing rather than output-reducing. Enforcers taking an optimizing, limits of antitrust approach will therefore exercise caution in condemning or discouraging vertical restraints.

That’s exactly what Josh Wright has done. In an early post-Leegin RPM order predating Josh’s tenure, the FTC endorsed a liability rule that placed an inappropriately heavy burden on RPM defendants. Josh later laid the groundwork for correcting that mistake, advocating a much more evidence-based (and defendant-friendly) RPM rule. In the McWane case, the Commission condemned an exclusive dealing arrangement that had been in place for long enough to cause anticompetitive harm but hadn’t done so. Josh rightly called out the majority for elevating theoretical harm over actual market evidence. (Adopting a highly deferential stance, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the Commission majority, but Josh was right to criticize the majority’s implicit hostility toward exclusive dealing.) In settling the Graco case, the Commission again went beyond the evidence, requiring the defendant to cease exclusive dealing and to stop giving loyalty rebates even though there was no evidence that either sort of vertical restraint contributed to the anticompetitive harm giving rise to the action at issue. Josh rightly took the Commission to task for reflexively treating vertical restraints as suspect when they’re usually procompetitive and had an obvious procompetitive justification (avoidance of interbrand free-riding) in the case at hand.

Horizontal Mergers

Horizontal mergers, like vertical restraints, are competitive mixed bags. Any particular merger of competitors may impose some consumer harm by reducing the competition facing the merged firm. The same merger, though, may provide some consumer benefit by lowering the merged firm’s costs and thereby allowing it to compete more vigorously (most notably, by lowering its prices). A merger policy committed to minimizing the consumer welfare losses from unwarranted condemnations of net beneficial mergers and improper acquittals of net harmful ones would afford equal treatment to claims of anticompetitive harm and procompetitive benefit, requiring each to be established by the same quantum of proof.

The federal enforcement agencies’ new Horizontal Merger Guidelines, however, may put a thumb on the scale, tilting the balance toward a finding of anticompetitive harm. The Guidelines make it easier for the agencies to establish likely anticompetitive harm. Enforcers may now avoid defining a market if they point to adverse unilateral effects using the gross upward pricing pressure index (GUPPI). The merging parties, by contrast, bear a heavy burden when they seek to show that their contemplated merger will occasion efficiencies. They must: (1) prove that any claimed efficiencies are “merger-specific” (i.e., incapable of being achieved absent the merger); (2) “substantiate” asserted efficiencies; and (3) show that such efficiencies will result in the very markets in which the agencies have established likely anticompetitive effects.

In an important dissent (Ardagh), Josh observed that the agencies’ practice has evolved such that there are asymmetric burdens in establishing competitive effects, and he cautioned that this asymmetry will enhance error costs. (Geoff praised that dissent here.) In another dissent (Family Dollar/Dollar Tree), Josh acknowledged some potential problems with the promising but empirically unverified GUPPI, and he wisely advocated the creation of safe harbors for mergers generating very low GUPPI scores. (I praised that dissent here.)

I could go on and on, but these examples suffice to illustrate what has been, in my opinion, Josh’s most important contribution as an FTC commissioner: his constant effort to strengthen antitrust’s effectiveness by acknowledging its inevitable and inexorable limits. Coming on the heels of the FTC’s and DOJ’s rejection of the Section 2 Report—a document that was highly attuned to antitrust’s limits—Josh was just what antitrust needed.

Filed under: antitrust, Efficiencies, error costs, exclusive dealing, federal trade commission, JDW Symposium, merger guidelines, section 5, vertical restraints Tagged: Federal Trade Commission, ftc, joshua wright, Symposium