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TOTM As the start of the new academic year inches closer, and students are deciding what courses to take, I thought I’d give a little plug . . .
As the start of the new academic year inches closer, and students are deciding what courses to take, I thought I’d give a little plug to antitrust law. I’ve seen enrollment in antitrust courses vary dramatically over the past 10 years or so since I was a student and now as a professor. I certainly know the case against taking antitrust: “its not a bar course,” “you have to know a bunch of economics, right?”, and “its really difficult.” But I hear this question from students frequently and I thought I’d share my typical answer to the titular question here…
Read the full piece here.
TOTM In response to my post about the optimal institutional design for merger enforcement and the problems associated with dual federal enforcement, a reader points me . . .
In response to my post about the optimal institutional design for merger enforcement and the problems associated with dual federal enforcement, a reader points me to this related paper by Jon Klick, Francesco Parisi, and Norbert Schulz in the International Review of Law and Economics which models alternatives for allocating decision-making across multiple agencies. One of the fundamental insights is that fragmented regulatory authority can result in actions that produce various sorts of externalities in regulatory competition. For example, in concurrent regulation, one might think of the first agency’s decision to approve a merger as increasing the size of the rents that can be extracted by the second actor. This might be a good model of the sizeable extraction achieved by the FCC in the satellite radio merger.
TOTM Financial Times (HT: Danny Sokol) highlights the problem of multi-jurisdictional antitrust enforcement, emphasizing the rise of India and China. The article repeats the basic point, . . .
Financial Times (HT: Danny Sokol) highlights the problem of multi-jurisdictional antitrust enforcement, emphasizing the rise of India and China. The article repeats the basic point, worth repeating, that international cooperation can help avoid bad outcomes with multiple regulatory stakeholders with different incentives and institutional environments…
TOTM Over at Overcoming Bias, they are asking the following question: Given how little it seems to cost to have someone killed, why don’t more corporations . . .
Over at Overcoming Bias, they are asking the following question:
Given how little it seems to cost to have someone killed, why don’t more corporations have their competitors’ leaders knocked off?
There are interesting answers in the comments suggesting that perhaps these killings or rival firms’ leaders are more common or more costly than commonly thought. Here’s a different question that only an antitrust junkie would ask: Would such a corporate assassination give rise to an antitrust violation?
TOTM While much has been said about the recent Milton Friedman Institute scuffle at the University of Chicago (including here at TOTM here), Chicago GSB Professor . . .
While much has been said about the recent Milton Friedman Institute scuffle at the University of Chicago (including here at TOTM here), Chicago GSB Professor John Cochrane’s scathing comments on the original Protest letter have stirred up some additional commentary worth reading. In particular, Craig Newmark (who adds the new fact that apparently the Protest letter was not sent to the economics department, the GSB, or the Institute — does this mean it was sent to the law school?) and Steve Horwitz, who quiet nicely turns the Protesters complaints about the negative externalities imposed on “other” Chicago faculty by the university’s free-market reputation on its head…
TOTM Geoff and Thom (see the comments) continue to have the Whole Foods litigation covered. I don’t and can’t have anything to add to their comments . . .
Geoff and Thom (see the comments) continue to have the Whole Foods litigation covered. I don’t and can’t have anything to add to their comments about the particulars of the litigation. I will note, playing off my previous post on bad case law out there looking to be overturned, that there is significant demand for some guidance from the Supreme Court on horizontal mergers and market definition in particular.
TOTM The DC Circuit has reversed the district court in the Whole Foods case. The opinion is here. [HT: Danny Sokol] As regular readers know, we . . .
The DC Circuit has reversed the district court in the Whole Foods case. The opinion is here. [HT: Danny Sokol]
As regular readers know, we have covered this case extensively on this blog, including most recently this great, lengthy post from Thom on the proper standard of review. I wouldn’t be surprised if Thom is disappointed with the standard adopted by the DC Circuit in its appeal, and I look forward to his thoughts.
TOTM My colleague Tom Hazlett (George Mason University) has a characteristically thoughtful and provocative column in the Financial Times on the recent Clearwire joint venture and . . .
My colleague Tom Hazlett (George Mason University) has a characteristically thoughtful and provocative column in the Financial Times on the recent Clearwire joint venture and what it tells us about the “innovation commons” and current public policy debates such as network neutrality, spectrum property rights, and municipal wi-fi. Here’s an excerpt…
TOTM There’s been a bit of discussion about the “most destructive” decision that is good law around the blogs, e.g. here and here, in response to . . .
There’s been a bit of discussion about the “most destructive” decision that is good law around the blogs, e.g. here and here, in response to John McCain’s criticism of Boumedine calling it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.” The line of discussion led me to think about the titular question. Antitrust law has the fairly odd feature that lower court decisions are overturned at a fairly low rate. There are a handful of SCOTUS reversals of old, “bad” precedent, e.g. Leegin overturned Dr. Miles, State Oil overturned Albrecht, Independent Ink overturned the rule that a patent holder was presumed to have market power in tying cases (my analysis here). In fact, prior to Leegin, the SCOTUS had been routinely reversing some bad prior precedent with little discussion (compare the reaction to Leegin to the unanimous State Oil decision on Max RPM in 1997 in which there was zero talk of stare decisis!).
