I have great respect for my sociologically trained brethren and sistren (cistern?) but am not sure what, exactly, they are asking for. One sociologist thinks economists downplay race and gender — “their supply and demand curves don’t deal with these questions” — which is silly, as much of the analysis of subprimes by labor economists focuses exactly on this. I’m not claiming that sociology (or anthropology or history or psychology) has no useful policy implications, of course, only asking for specifics.

Read the full piece here.

In April 2008, the UK Competition Commission issued its Final Report culminating from its grocery sector inquiry.  Along with supermarket concentration, the concern that emerges out of that Report is that supermarkets will use their power to negotiate sharp deals with suppliers.

Read the full piece here.

I’ve criticized the European Commission’s antitrust attack against Intel here and the resulting $1.44 billion fine.  Now the EU is drawing fire for allegedly burying testimony, or at least failing to record it in a satisfactory manner, from Dell that it chose Intel’s chips not because of the coercive force of any of Intel’s rebates but because it preferred the performance of those chips over AMD’s product offerings.  Part of the problem here is that the EU’s 542 page  decision remains confidential and so it is impossible to tell what kind of impact this testimony would have on the issue of liability — and indeed the WSJ story sensibly suggests that there is little reason to believe that disclosure of this evidence would have changed the outcome.  The WSJ story concludes by taking a swing at EU procedure…

Read the full piece here. 

I recently commented on Gordon Crovitz’s WSJ column on the Microsoft-Yahoo deal arguing that antitrust was simply too cumbersome to deal competition issues in dynamic markets like search.  A short version of my take was that these concerns are often overstated in the areas of cartels and even sometimes in merger enforcement — but have their greatest bite in single firm conduct cases involving innovative markets where economic technology for detecting anticompetitive conduct is at its weakest and the stakes are highest.  Randy Picker (Chicago) chimes in on the Crovitz piece with an interesting take and a call for even-handed application of claims that antitrust is obsolete…

Read the full piece here.

Having just had four wisdom teeth pulled this morning at age 32, about ten years after the dentist first recommended it, the dental services market is on my (anesthesia fogged) mind this afternoon.  But it reminded me of a post I wanted to write highlighting the efforts of the FTC Office of Policy and Planning for their latest comments (a few months old, but worth noting) to the legislature of Louisiana on a pending bill (HB 687) that would restrict competition and entry in the dental market in that state.

Read the full piece here.

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.