Over at Professor Bainbridge’s place, Iman Anabtawi has some thoughts on the granting of “spring-loaded” options, an option granted at a market price that does not incorporate some favorable non-public information, and insider trading laws.

Read the full piece here.

I recently picked up a copy of the July Harper’s Magazine to read an essay by Barry C. Lynn entitled, “Breaking the Chain: The Antitrust Case Against Wal-Mart.” If you can’t tell from the title, the basic point is that antitrust authorities should break up Wal-Mart and put an end to the immense havoc that the retail giant has caused the economy. There is very little in the way of actual analysis in the article. It is mostly hand waving about retail consolidation without economic coherence, with some dramatic parade-of-horribles-type hyberbole mixed in.

Read the full piece here.

Kinderstart.com has filed a suit against Google which includes an antitrust claim based on the theory that Google changed its ranking algorithm in a manner that caused Kinderstart’s ranking to drop and revenues to plunge. HT: Antitrust Review. Eric Goldman has got this covered, including links to the complaint, analysis, Google’s motion to dismiss and related briefs, and the oral argument transcripts. The briefs and transcripts (antitrust arguments by Jonathan Jacobson at Wilson Sonsini) are well worth reading on the antitrust points.

Read the full piece here.

Over at Co-op, guest blogger Eduardo Penalver posts this screed against property rights initiatives like Oregon’s Measure 37 (about which I blogged here) and Washington’s proposed Initiative I-933.  To my mind he gets it pretty much completely wrong, so I thought I should weigh in.

Read the full piece here.

My friend Seth Weinberger over at Security Dilemmas has a great post on why the left is actually to blame for the post-9/11 national security apparatus it (and many others) hates so much. Basically, it comes down to “when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”  When bigger government is your answer to every problem, don’t be too surprised when big government tries to actually solve every problem.

Read the full piece here.

Greetings loyal fans (i.e., “hi mom”) (actually, I’ve made this gag before, and so I think it’s time to set the record straight: My mom has almost certainly — nay, certainly — never, ever read this blog.  I’m pretty sure she has no idea what a blog is at all. She may not even be sure what a computer is.).

Read the full piece here.

This National Review editorial defends George Mason’s Law and Economics Center from what it describes as “junk ethics” charges.  My colleague Ilya Somin has picked up the story at Volokh.  In the comments to Ilya’s post, GMU Foundation Professor and Associate Dean Frank Buckley, Director of the LEC, responds to some of the charges that have been directed at the LEC (i.e. corporate donations are buying judges votes, anonymous donors allow corporations to do so freely, the lectures are part of a right-wing conspiracy, etc.)…

Read the full piece here. 

Hanno Kaiser at the Antitrust Review reports (courtesy of the ABA listserv) that SCOTUS has granted cert in Weyerhauser (predatory buying) and Twombly (pleading standards), but not Schering-Plough (reverse payments).

Read the full piece here.

Economist Michael Salinger, Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Economics for the past year, comments on the recent FTC Report and price gouging in Sunday’s WSJ (HT: Greg Mankiw). I have blogged a bit about the FTC Report previously: once about its findings (that “market manipulation” did not explain post-Katrina price increases), once about media reactions to the Report, and again criticizing the ill-advised proposed federal price gouging legislation.

Read the full piece here.