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TOTM The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) announced yesterday that it has filed suit, along with 29 states and the District of Columbia, charging Live Nation Entertainment Inc. . . .
The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) announced yesterday that it has filed suit, along with 29 states and the District of Columbia, charging Live Nation Entertainment Inc. and its subsidiary Ticketmaster LLC with monopolizing the live-events industry in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act.
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges that Live Nation’s so-called “flywheel” (its bundle of concert promotions, artist management, venue ownership, and ticketing services) allows it to extend its dominance in one market into the other adjacent markets. It seeks both a jury trial and structural relief, with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland declaring that: “It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster.”
Read the full piece here.
Scholarship Abstract Have the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings become irrelevant? The ostensible purpose of the US News law school rankings is to . . .
Have the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings become irrelevant? The ostensible purpose of the US News law school rankings is to give prospective law students convenient and reliable information about the relative quality of law schools and help them decide which law school to attend. Law schools care about the US News rankings because prospective law students care about the US News rankings. A ranking increase means more prestige and better credentialed students, while a ranking decrease means less prestige and students with worse credentials. Accordingly, law schools are jealous of their US News ranking.
Do prospective law students actually care about the US News rankings anymore? We compared changes in law school US News rankings to changes in prospective law student preferences the following year. Those variables should be strongly positively correlated. If a school’s US News ranking increases, prospective law students should prefer it more the following year, and if it decreases, they should prefer it less. But in fact, they were at best very weakly positively correlated, and often they are weakly negatively correlated. In other words, prospective law students appear to be largely indifferent to changes in a school’s US News ranking. This suggests that prospective law students are getting information about which law school to attend from someplace other than US News. And it also suggests that law schools can safely stop paying attention to the US News rankings, because their customers don’t care.
Popular Media In its brief history, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been the subject of three of the most important separation of powers cases in . . .
In its brief history, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been the subject of three of the most important separation of powers cases in the last half century. In the first two cases, NLRB v. Noel Canning (2014), which addressed the recess appointment power of the President, and Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2020), which dealt with the authority of the President to remove a sitting head of a single-member independent agency, the Supreme Court sided with the challengers.
TOTM The sweeping prohibition on noncompete agreements promulgated by the Federal Trade Commision (FTC)—which would nullify 30 million contracts and preempt the laws of 46 states if it . . .
The sweeping prohibition on noncompete agreements promulgated by the Federal Trade Commision (FTC)—which would nullify 30 million contracts and preempt the laws of 46 states if it takes effect, as scheduled, on Sept. 4—is set for its first judicial test. In Ryan, LLC v. FTC, Judge Ada Brown of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has indicated that she expects to rule on the plaintiffs’ motions for a stay of the effective date and for a preliminary injunction by July 3. Expedited proceedings in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, and perhaps the U.S. Supreme Court, are likely to follow.
Scholarship The Yale Law and Political Economy (“LPE”) Project began in 2017 following the surprising election of Donald Trump as President. In that time, LPE has . . .
The Yale Law and Political Economy (“LPE”) Project began in 2017 following the surprising election of Donald Trump as President. In that time, LPE has increasingly emerged into an intellectual and ideological movement particularly at elite law schools involving the efforts of numerous leading academics, substantial foundation backing, and its own dedicated journal. Lina Kahn, an early contributor to the movement while still a student, has gone on to become Chair of the Federal Trade Commission.
LPE calls for a deconstruction of what it sees as the dominant intellectual paradigm in law over the past several decades, namely the influence of law and economics in law and regulation and a retrenchment of redistributionist policies. Underlying this critique is an appeal to the so-called “Golden Age of American Capitalism” that spanned the period 1945-1973. Building on the foundation of French economist Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, LPE scholars view this period as one of steady economic growth, widely-shared prosperity, and economic stability, that suddenly ended around 1973 for no clear reason and was replaced with what they alternately characterize “Neoliberal” worldview or “Twentieth-Century Consensus.”
This article critiques this narrative. As is demonstrated, U.S. policymakers turned away from the post-War consensus because of a myriad of clear reasons—“stagflation” (simultaneous high rates of inflation and unemployment combined with slow economic growth), declining global economic competitiveness, and the increasing financial burden of resisting Soviet aggression during the Cold War. It was widely recognized that the economic successes of the post-War era resulted largely from the United States’s dominant global economic position following the decimation of World War II and that the economy succeeded despite, rather than because of the various factors extolled by LPE thinkers. Fears of real economic decline and its consequences prompted a groundswell of support for modernization of regulatory and antitrust policies.
Read at SSRN.
Scholarship Abstract A meme is a useful cognitive device: it compresses complex information into a simple structure for easy transmission from person to person. But compression . . .
A meme is a useful cognitive device: it compresses complex information into a simple structure for easy transmission from person to person. But compression implies loss of detail and nuance. To put it another way, memes can be a substitute for careful inquiry. And, of course, even as they glide fluidly from mind to mind, memes can be flat-out wrong. In the field of antitrust, the most significant and most frequently encountered memes give credit to antitrust oversight—what the New Deal antitrust czar Thurman Arnold famously called “the policeman at the elbow”—for ensuring that large firms did not stand in the way of innovation. Careful historical inquiry suggests, by contrast, that most of these memes far overstate the positive value of antitrust scrutiny and far understate the importance of dynamic competition as the spur to innovation. History also suggests that even if antitrust scrutiny can be a good cop, it can also be a bad cop. In many cases, antitrust scrutiny has helped slow the rate of innovative activity and alter its direction in ways that were often the opposite of what was intended.
Popular Media The recent vote by the Federal Communications Commission’s to put nearly all internet service providers under Title II of the Communications Act is the latest . . .
The recent vote by the Federal Communications Commission’s to put nearly all internet service providers under Title II of the Communications Act is the latest in what have been a string of regulatory decisions that threaten broadband investment. But if Congress has the will take a just a handful of bold and decisive steps, it could salvage the future of innovation for American consumers.
TOTM Competition policymakers around the world have been expressing concerns about competition in emerging artificial-intelligence (AI) industries, with some taking steps to investigate them further. These . . .
Competition policymakers around the world have been expressing concerns about competition in emerging artificial-intelligence (AI) industries, with some taking steps to investigate them further. These fears are notably fueled by a sense that incumbent (albeit, in adjacent markets) digital platforms may use strategic partnerships with AI firms to stave off competition from this fast-growing field.
Popular Media The California State Legislature is considering amendments to the state’s antitrust laws that would enable more stringent antitrust scrutiny of technology companies, particularly so-called “Big Tech.” A . . .
The California State Legislature is considering amendments to the state’s antitrust laws that would enable more stringent antitrust scrutiny of technology companies, particularly so-called “Big Tech.” A preliminary report on single-firm conduct authored by a group of experts recruited by the California Law Revision Commission suggests this could be achieved by mimicking several features of European competition law. Unfortunately, this “Europeanization” of Californian antitrust law would benefit neither California’s economy nor its consumers.
