Seemingly unconstrained by antitrust law, Zillow appears to be using a proxy to exclude another entrant, Homes.com, in yet another market that Zillow dominates.

Anger. That’s been the most frequent and obvious reaction to the Justice Department’s baffling and embarrassing decision this week to settle its monopoly lawsuit against Live Nation. After years of evidence that Live Nation, the largest artist manager and concert promoter in America,  in coordination with its in-house event-ticketing monopoly Ticketmaster, consistently ripped off fans... Read More

You don’t have to be an economist to recognize that we are living through an era of diminished competition. You simply must open your eyes and ears. And wallet. Whether paying for airline tickets, groceries, health insurance, concert tickets, ski passes, or video streaming services, consumers have experienced a consistent rise in prices, making things... Read More

Monopolization comes in many flavors. As we have seen over the years, firms use assorted and creative methods to acquire or maintain dominant positions. Exclusive dealing, predatory pricing, and tying are some of the competitively suspect practices familiar to antitrust lawyers and economists. But the courts have made clear the list of “anticompetitive” or unfair practices... Read More

In December, Dennis Romboy and Art Raymond of Deseret News reported that the University of Utah’s board of trustees approved a first-of-its-kind private equity deal between the school and Otro Capital to fund athletics. The decision to partner with private equity appears to be based on a crude assessment of the contributions (revenues and expenses) that can be... Read More

This week, to much fanfare, Google introduced its new Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). UCP was developed in collaboration with multiple retail partners, including Target and Walmart.. UCP involves artificial intelligence (AI) agents (i.e., programs that can perform some tasks autonomously) in the shopping process (aka, agentic commerce). Simply put, instead of searching for a specific... Read More

Housing prices are up, and would-be homeowners are shifting to rental units. The inventory of homes for sale is shrinking because investors are buying up properties with cash offers. Investors then rent the homes to households who cannot afford mortgages. Many feel that the American dream of homeownership is slipping away. Building more homes won’t... Read More

In recent months, public attention has returned to a business practice that many consumers intuitively recognize as unfair and has provoked varying attempts to regulate: surveillance pricing. Investigations into Instacart’s grocery pricing, along with renewed scrutiny of algorithmic pricing by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), have revived concerns that firms increasingly tailor prices to individual consumers based not on cost or... Read More

Price inflation has been the dominant economic concern for Americans in the post-Covid era. The rising prices of cars, groceries, and healthcare (especially given recent Congressional inaction) have all imposed increasing burdens on the average American. Despite the consistent price hikes for those items, all of them pale in comparison to the skyrocketing rental costs that... Read More