Gordon Crovitz (WSJ) plays the new economy card on antitrust.  Its a familiar wrap for those in the antitrust community that hit its peak in the original Microsoft days with virtually every competition policy scholar and commentator chiming in with an opinion about whether the internet and network effects and so forth rendered antitrust obsolete.  Analyzing the Microsoft case is a bit of an antitrust Rorschach test nowadays with critics of antitrust in the modern economy viewing the Microsoft prosecution in the U.S. as disastrous and likely harmful to consumers, more moderate (but still skeptical) folks believing that the prosecution was a Quixotic and not likely to affect competition or consumers because antitrust was simply too slow to respond in dynamic markets, and proponents pointing to it as proof of antitrust’s modern relevance.  The best analysis I’ve read of the Microsoft saga, and one I recommend to anybody interested, is Page and Lopatka’s The Microsoft Case (Chicago Press).

Read the full piece here.

As American antitrust regulators hurtle headlong toward a Europeanized (i.e., competitor-focused) antitrust, I do hope they will at least avoid the tack the EU has taken in evaluating Lufthansa’s proposed takeover of Austrian Airlines. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that EU Antitrust Chief Neelie Kroes has directed her subordinates to draft a “conditional clearance” that approves the merger subject to Lufthansa’s surrender of a number of routes. Lufthansa offered to give up those routes “in response to the concerns raised by competitors,” the Journal reports. It also reports that EU regulators enlisted the assistance of Lufthansa’s competitors in fashioning the conditions to merger approval…

Read the full piece here. 

Commissioners Rosch and Kovacic of the Federal Trade Commission come out against the proposed CFPA.  Both emphasize the risk of shifting consumer protection authority away from an agency with substantial expertise in the area (including the Bureau of Economics which has an excellent record of reports and publications in this area) to an unproven agency.  Commissioner Kovacic ends his statement noting the potential for conflict in interpreting and enforcing consumer protection law as well as questioning the whether the CFPA commitment to “plain vanilla” products will improve welfare…

Read the full piece here. 

My colleague Ilya Somin insightfully defends against allegations of the death of Moneyball in baseball and legal academia — largely making the point that larger institutions with larger payrolls imitating the successful elements of the strategy.  There is more there, so go read the whole thing as well as an interesting comment thread.  Ilya points out the following non-exhaustive list of GMU strategies on the hiring market aimed at acquiring undervalued assets: (1) L&E scholars, (2) conservative and libertarian academics; (3) academics with strong publication records but otherwise inferior traditional academic credentials.  Ilya correctly notes that L&E scholars are no longer generally undervalued in legal academia (he also asserts that ideological discrimination and credential fetishization are less than ten years ago — a view that contradicts my own prior somewhat — but I want to focus on the L&E point).

Read the full piece here.

It looks like the old/new EU Microsoft browser tie-in case might be resolved through a requirement that Microsoft offers consumers a “ballot screen”  that would allow users to select and install competing browsers.  (HT: WSJ) That is, Microsoft will be offering up a menu of rival browsers to consumers.  Apparently, the EU is willing to allow Internet Explorer on the menu.  Word from the Commission on the proposal is favorable…

Read the full piece here. 

I was very pleased to thumb through the newest version of Antitrust Magazine and see a TOTM post get some attention.  Its always nice to be cited and have folks take the time to respond to your work — or in this case, blog post.  Its even more tickling when the person doing the responding is a prominent and well respected figure such as former Federal Trade Commissioner Leary.  Commissioner Leary revisits the FTC’s enforcement action in Ovation and takes on the criticism of that enforcement action in this post.  You can see Commissioner Leary’s article here (I believe ABA registration and password required).  I’m grateful for the response and am going to take the opportunity  to argue that, despite the Commissioner’s criticisms, the troublesome implications that I pointed out in the earlier post associated with the enforcement approach in Ovation remain (see also guest blogger Mary Coleman’s related concerns).

Read the full piece here. 

Here’s a great post from Glen Whitman on libertarian paternalism as applied to mortgages and the housing market.  Glen takes Richard Thaler to task for his NY Times piece discussing behavioral economics in the mortgage market and advocating defaults for “plain vanilla” mortgages. Glen’s primary beef is that Thaler ignores the distinction between private and public action…

Read the full piece here. 

There has been a lot of talk recently about the possibility that lax antitrust gave rise to the financial crisis or that antitrust could be used as a proactive weapon to prevent mergers and acquisitions that would create entities “too big to fail.” George Priest recently took AAG Varney to task for suggesting that there was a consensus amongst economists that lax antitrust contributed to the current financial situation.  Simon Johnson has been pushing the idea that antitrust is an appropriate tool for dealing with the type of financial risk imposed by businesses that become so large that their failure would cause substantial damage throughout the economy.  The idea might be catching on.  Frank Pasquale recently cited to Johnson’s work favorably.  The idea has also been favorably cited by Commissioner Rosch.

Read the full piece here.

Commissioner Rosch has offered a defense of the withdraw of the Section 2 Report.  This is an important step and the Commissioner, who readers know I’ve criticized from time to time here, should be credited for laying out his specific objections to the Report.  The objections are, in short, that the Report…

Read the full piece here.