Research Programs
More
What are you looking for?
Showing 9 of 76 Results in Internet Governance
TOTM Christopher L. Sagers is a Distinguished Professor of Law at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.
It is a useful thing sometimes to be a token liberal at a conservative academic conference. More than once I’ve found myself on a panel at which I wanted to talk about issues that I thought were at the heart of the event-sponsors’ views, but they then wanted to talk about different things entirely, things I wouldn’t expect to be on anyone’s agenda. Maybe that sort of thing reflects our siloed popular debate generally. When we actually talk to each other once in a while, we’re often surprised that we’ve been off in our corners talking about completely different things. Anyway, today again I’m interested in why this website’s editors chose this particular merger as a topic, much more so than I am in the merger itself.
Read the full piece here.
TOTM Jarod M. Bona is the CEO of and Attorney at BonaLaw PC as well as a writer at The Antitrust Attorney Blog. Steven Levitsky is also an Attorney at BonaLaw PC and a writer at The Antitrust Attorney Blog.
One year ago, Amazon acquired Whole Foods in a $13.7 billion deal. At the time, David Balto, a disciple of current antitrust orthodoxy, wrote…
TOTM Dirk Auer is a Research Fellow at the Liege Competition and Innovation Institute.
What is antitrust populism? In a deeply insightful paper, Barack Orbach defines it as “the use of thin ideas, exaggerations, and anxieties to advance antitrust theories”. From a policy standpoint, this often leads to the protection of small businesses and the identification of large business size as evil.
TOTM Hal Singer is a Principal at Economists Incorporated and an Adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.
When the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) waved through Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods without batting an eye last August, some New Brandeisians predicted doom. But I was a bit more sanguine. And that’s still the case on the one-year anniversary of the deal. Here’s why.
TOTM Will Rinehart is the Director of Technology and Innovation Policy at the American Action Forum.
When Amazon and Whole Foods announced they were pursuing a $13.7 billion deal in June of last year, the grocer was struggling. Whole Foods might have been an early leader in organic food, but with that success came competition. Walmart began selling organics in 2014 while Costcost and Safeway revamped product lines for changing consumer preferences. By 2017, same-store sales at Whole Foods had declined for the previous two years and Barclays estimated that the company had lost about 3 percent of their foot traffic between 2015 and 2017. Simply put, Whole Foods wasn’t well managed enough to compete.
TOTM Robert D. Atkinson is President of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
One year after the Amazon/Whole Foods merger, prices at Whole Foods stores have gone down. Amazon Prime members receive discounts on select products and if they use their Amazon credit card they receive 5 percent back. Consumers in many markets can now order groceries online and have them delivered for free. Amazon is expanding the number of stores nationwide. Not surprisingly, consumers appear to like the post-merger changes. Moreover, competitors are fighting back. Kroger, for example, is increasing its stock of organic foods, starting free grocery delivery, and expanding private label goods to reduce prices.
TOTM Eric Fruits is the Chief Economist at the International Center for Law & Economics.
Last July, U.S. Congressman David N. Cicilline, who serves on the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee, called for a hearing on Amazon’s proposed $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods. The Congressman claimed he was not “taking a position on the legality” of Amazon’s attempt to purchase Whole Foods. In fact, his letter noted that “several leading antitrust scholars” had suggested the merger would be beneficial to consumers.
TOTM Steve Horwitz is the Distinguished Professor of Free Enterprise, Department of Economics, at Ball State University.
In considering the importance of the Amazon merger with Whole Foods, some history is helpful. The relevant historical context here is not just the history of those two firms, but the longer and broader history of the grocery industry. In particular, it’s helpful to see this merger as the next stage in a pattern of falling transaction costs and shifting specializations that have driven that evolutionary process. We can see how the two parties to this merger both came to prominence independently as part of that process, and how the merger is the natural next step.
TOTM One year ago tomorrow the Amazon/Whole Foods merger closed, following its approval by the FTC. The merger was something of a flashpoint in the growing populist antitrust movement, raising some interesting questions — and a host of objections from a number of scholars, advocates, journalists, antitrust experts, and others who voiced a range of possible problematic outcomes.
One year ago tomorrow the Amazon/Whole Foods merger closed, following its approval by the FTC. The merger was something of a flashpoint in the growing populist antitrust movement, raising some interesting questions — and a host of objections from a number of scholars, advocates, journalists, antitrust experts, and others who voiced a range of possible problematic outcomes.
Under settled antitrust law — evolved over the last century-plus — the vertical merger between Amazon and Whole Foods was largely uncontroversial. But the size and scope of Amazon’s operation and ambition has given some pause. And despite the apparent inapplicability of antitrust law to the array of populist concerns about large tech companies, advocates nonetheless contend that antitrust should be altered to deal with new threats posed by companies like Amazon.
For something of a primer on the antitrust debate surrounding Amazon, listen to ICLE’s Geoffrey Manne and Open Markets’ Lina Khan on Season 2 Episode 1 of Briefly, a podcast produced by the University of Chicago Law Review.
Beginning tomorrow, August 28, Truth on the Market and the International Center for Law & Economics will host a blog symposium discussing the impact of the merger.
One year on, we asked antitrust scholars and other experts to consider:
As in the past (see examples of previous TOTM blog symposia here), we’ve lined up an outstanding and diverse group of scholars to discuss these issues.
The symposium posts will be collected here. We hope you’ll join us!
