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Showing 9 of 270 Results in Monopolization
TOTM Emergence of the ‘Neo-Brandeisians’ Thus, matters unfolded until the curtain began to descend on the second Obama term in 2016. In the midst of presidential . . .
Thus, matters unfolded until the curtain began to descend on the second Obama term in 2016. In the midst of presidential primary season, a targeted political challenge to the prevailing economic approach to antitrust first came to light. No one has yet clearly identified who was doing the targeting, but the March 26, 2016 edition of The Economist magazine included an article that suggested U.S. firms were earning excessive profits because new entry was blocked by monopoly abuses and by “lobbying” to obstruct competition. The Economist suggested scrutiny of U.S. antitrust policy as one item on a broad list of suggested remedies.
Read the full piece here.
TOTM The Evolution of FTC Antitrust Enforcement – Highlights of Its Origins and Major Trends 1910-1914 – Creation and Launch The election of 1912, which led . . .
The election of 1912, which led to the creation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), occurred at the apex of the Progressive Era. Since antebellum times, Grover Cleveland had been the only Democrat elected as president. But a Democratic landslide in the 1910 midterms during the Taft administration substantially reduced the Republicans’ Senate majority and gave the Democrats a huge majority in the House, signaling a major political shift. Spurred by progressive concern that Standard Oil—decided in 1911—signaled judicial leniency toward trusts and monopolies, government control of big business became the leading issue of the 1912 campaign. Both the progressive Democrats and the so-called Republican “insurgents” favored stronger antitrust laws, reduced hours and an antitrust exemption for workers, and closer federal regulation of banking and currency, among other items. Progressive agendas led both Woodrow Wilson’s “New Freedom” platform and the “New Nationalism” of former Republican President Theodore Roosevelt and his Bull Moose Party.
TOTM Concentration is a terrible measure of [insert basically anything people actually care about]. Have I said that before? Concentration tells us nothing about market power, efficiency, or whether . . .
Concentration is a terrible measure of [insert basically anything people actually care about]. Have I said that before? Concentration tells us nothing about market power, efficiency, or whether policy changes can do anything to increase welfare. Economists know that, especially industrial organization (IO) economists.
If we want to measure market power for a seller, a better measure is the markup, defined as the ratio of price over marginal cost. If we want to measure market power for a buyer, we can look at the markdown. Either one is a better measure of market power (possibly bad) and often the very definition of market power.
Scholarship Abstract Evidence of rising market power in the U.S. economy has received widespread attention in macroeconomics literature. Recent research has linked trends in measured market . . .
Evidence of rising market power in the U.S. economy has received widespread attention in macroeconomics literature. Recent research has linked trends in measured market power to other secular trends in the U.S., including multi-decade trends of declining rates of job reallocation and business entry (or “business dynamism”). Intuitively, firms with more market power are less responsive to shocks, and industries characterized by market power may have (or create) significant barriers to entry. Both forces predict a negative correlation between market power and business dynamism. However, industry-level data shows zero, or often a positive, correlation between markups and business dynamism; industries that experienced larger increases in markups had smaller decreases in dynamism on average. Those few industries that saw both large declines in markups and large declines in dynamism do not account for a significant share of the aggregate trends in markups and dynamism. Our results suggest that market power does not explain the decline in dynamism.
TOTM In a world in which so-called “Big Tech” has dominated antitrust discussions for a decade or more, who would’ve guessed that golf would grab the . . .
In a world in which so-called “Big Tech” has dominated antitrust discussions for a decade or more, who would’ve guessed that golf would grab the biggest headlines? The proposed merger of the PGA Tour and LIV Golf has some major headline-grabbing potential: sports, big money, big names, 9/11, human-rights abuses, and cringeworthy public-relations attempts.
Aside from those issues, the PGA-LIV link-up also presents some important issues for antitrust enforcers.
TOTM In Susan Crawford’s 2013 book “Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age,” the Harvard Law School professor argued that . . .
In Susan Crawford’s 2013 book “Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age,” the Harvard Law School professor argued that the U.S. telecommunications industry had become dominated by a few powerful companies, leading to limited competition and negative consequences for consumers, especially for broadband internet.
Crawford’s ire was focused particularly on Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon, as she made the case that these three firms were essentially monopolies that had divided territories and set up roadblocks through mergers, vertical integration, and influence over regulators and franchisors to prevent competition and innovation. In particular, she noted the power Comcast commanded in securing access to live sports, allowing them to effectively prevent cord-cutting and limit competition from other cable companies.
According to Crawford, the consequences of this monopoly power were high prices for service, poor customer service, and limited access to high-speed internet in certain areas, particularly in rural and low-income communities. In effect, she saw no incentives for broadband companies to invest in high-speed and reliable internet. In response, she proposed increased competition and regulation, including the development of fiber-based municipal broadband to foster greater consumer choice, lower prices, and improved access to reliable internet service.
A decade later, the broadband market is far more dynamically competitive than critics like Crawford believed was possible. YouTube TV’s rights to NFL Sunday Ticket (as well as the massive amount of programming available online) suggests that Comcast did not have the control over important programming like live sports that would have enabled them to prevent cord-cutting or to limit competition. And the rise of 10G broadband also suggests that there is much more competition in the broadband market than Crawford believed was possible, as her “future proof” goal of symmetrical 1Gb Internet will soon be slower than what the market actually provides.
TOTM What should a competition law for 21st century look like? This point is debated across many jurisdictions. The Digital Markets, Competition, and Consumers Bill (DMCC) would change . . .
What should a competition law for 21st century look like? This point is debated across many jurisdictions. The Digital Markets, Competition, and Consumers Bill (DMCC) would change UK competition law’s approach to large platforms. The bill’s core point is to place the UK Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) Digital Markets Unit (DMU) on a statutory footing with relaxed evidentiary standards to regulate so-called “Big Tech” firms more easily. This piece considers some areas to watch as debate regarding the bill unfold.
Amicus Brief Summary of Argument Courts should approach predatory pricing claims with caution because price cutting is central to competition and because false positive errors can chill . . .
Courts should approach predatory pricing claims with caution because price cutting is central to competition and because false positive errors can chill competition to the detriment of economic efficiency and consumer welfare.
Total average system cost is not an appropriate price floor for finding predation; the district court was right to reject a fixed-cost standard. This Court should reject claims based on the allegedly exclusionary effect of pricing not shown to be below short-run incremental cost. Moreover, a contention that Duke Energy’s discount or rebate structure was “exclusionary” should not change the analysis, because the timing of price reductions should not be relevant.
Scholarship Abstract It is widely assumed that platform technology markets are inherently prone to converge on monopoly outcomes in which a single firm or a handful . . .
It is widely assumed that platform technology markets are inherently prone to converge on monopoly outcomes in which a single firm or a handful of firms enjoy market power due to a combination of network effects and switching costs. This assumption supports both proposed and enacted regulatory interventions under competition law that place significant limitations on a wide range of practices by platform incumbents. In this paper, I revisit this market power assumption from theoretical and empirical perspectives. As a matter of theory, informed by selected real-world examples, I show that the conditions under which a platform incumbent can plausibly exercise market power are substantially more demanding than is commonly assumed. As a matter of empirics, I provide evidence from the food-delivery and cloud-computing markets, showing that widespread attributions of market power to leading platforms in these markets lack persuasive evidentiary support. Contrary to conventional wisdom, both theory and evidence cast significant doubt on the standard view that platform ecosystems are prone to converge on entrenched monopolies that justify preemptive intervention by competition regulators.
