I highly recommend co-blogger Thom’s paper (discussed in this post) for those interested in the current Section 2 debate over the appropriate standard for exclusionary conduct. While I tend to fall into the camp that views unilateral firm conduct as too diverse for a “holy grail” test to make sense, and therefore support different tests for different types of conduct, Thom’s paper does an excellent job of summarizing these tests and working through the potential implications of the Supreme Court’s Weyerhaeuser decision for each of them.

Read the full piece here.  

My colleague Tom Hazlett has a characteristically insightful essay in the Financial Times this week entitled “How the Walled Garden Promotes Innovation.” In response to critics that argue that “only a device that is optimised for any application and capable of accessing any network is efficient,” Hazlett offers Apple and DoCoMo as examples of how markets work best to respond to consumer preferences when “independent developers, content owners, hardware vendors and networks vie to discover preferred packages and pricing.”

Read the full piece here.

AAI continues its series of antitrust policy statements from presidential candidates with a submission from John Edwards. Again, I’m very pleased that the AAI was successful in getting this series of submissions together and inducing candidates to share their thoughts on antitrust policy. So what does Edwards have to say?

Read the full piece here.

I’ve just posted my latest antitrust article, Weyerhaeuser and the Search for Antitrust’s Holy Grail, to SSRN. Here’s the abstract…

Read the full piece here. 

Along with my Lewis & Clark colleague, Joe Miller, I have organized a conference on the patent law doctrine of obviousness following the Supreme Court’s KSR case last term.  It’s a great line-up of participants, and should be an excellent conference.

Read the full piece here.

I’ve previously discussed the voluntary pricing strategy taken by restaurants and cafes in a handful of states to offer food and drink for free and allow customers to decide whether and how much they would pay.  I was rather skeptical about the profitability of this strategy in the retail setting. But it looks like we may soon have another datapoint from another industry as the WSJ reports that Radiohead will sell its new album (“In Rainbows”) only as a digital download from its website and allowing fans to choose how much they will pay.

Read the full piece here.

I started writing this as a comment to Josh’s last post, but it got so long I figured I’d make a post out of it.  Thanks for the inspiration, Josh.

I really hope Radiohead releases the data on its little experiment!  My prediction: They will receive an average price of $2 and a median price of $0.

Read the full piece here. 

In case you haven’t already, I recommend taking a gander at today’s New York Time Book Review.  In it, there is a review of Naomi Klein’s new book, The Shock Doctrine, by Nobel-winning economist, Joe Stiglitz.  It’s an abomination (I’m sure the book is an abomination, too, but I’m referring to the book review).

Read the full piece here. 

That seems to be the message of presidential candidate/ Senator Barak Obama’s response to the American Antitrust Institute’s questions on antitrust (HT: Antitrust Review). First off, kudos to Obama for stating his position on antitrust in a public forum. I hope the rest of the candidates will do the same. Do go read the whole thing.

Read the full piece here.