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What To Do About Google’s Dominance of Online Advertising

By Tim Cowen
September 13, 2023
Image: Kent Walker, President of Global Affairs and Chief legal officer of Alphabet Inc., arrives at federal court on September 12, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
As the DOJ’s antitrust case against Google begins, all eyes are focused on whether Google violated antitrust law by, among other things, entering into exclusionary agreements with equipment makers like Apple and Samsung or web browsers like Mozilla. Per the District Court’s Memorandum Opinion, released August 4, “These agreements make Google the default search engine... Read More

The States Can Put the Brakes on Hospital Mergers

By Justin Stofferahn
August 30, 2023
Image: The initial legislative activity around the Sanford-Fairview merger leveraged the work by Attorney General (AG) Keith Ellison when the transaction was first announced. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
In July, a proposed $13 billion mega-merger between Sanford Health, the largest rural health system in the county, and Fairview Health Services, one of the largest systems in Minnesota’s Twin Cities metro, was called off. Abandonment of the merger came after concerted opposition from farmers, healthcare workers, and medical students, emboldened by passage of state... Read More

The New Merger Guidelines Offer an Important Course Correction on Merger Enforcement

By Hal Singer
August 22, 2023
Image: The new Merger Guidelines offer precisely the kind of guidance that would have prevented the courts in T-Mobile/Sprint and in Facebook/Within from committing significant errors.
If I were to draft new Merger Guidelines, I’d begin with two questions: (1) What have been the biggest failures of merger enforcement since the 1982 revision to the Merger Guidelines?; and (2) What can we do to prevent such failures going forward? The costs of under-enforcement have been large and well-documented, and include but... Read More

The Uninteresting and Retracted Piece from That Other Competition Site

By Darren Bush, Mark Glick, and Gabriel A. Lozada
August 14, 2023
This piece originally appeared in ProMarket but was subsequently retracted, with the following blurb (agreed-upon language between ProMarket’s Luigi Zingales and the authors): “ProMarket published the article “The Antitrust Output Goal Cannot Measure Welfare.” The main claim of the article was that “a shift out in a production possibility frontier does not necessarily increase welfare, as... Read More

Although the New Merger Guidelines Should Be Applauded, There Is Still Room for Improvement

By Darren Bush, Mark Glick, Pavitra Govindan and Gabriel A. Lozada
August 9, 2023
Image: The new Merger Guidelines offer precisely the kind of guidance that would have prevented the courts in T-Mobile/Sprint and in Facebook/Within from committing significant errors.
The New Merger Guidelines (the “Guidelines”) provide a framework for analyzing when proposed mergers likely violate Section 7 of the Clayton Act that is more faithful to controlling law and Congressional intent than earlier Guidelines. The thirteen guidelines presented in the new Guidelines go quite a long way in pulling the Agencies back from an... Read More

Is US News a Vital Hub for Collusion Among the Elite Colleges?

By Sahaj Sharda
July 26, 2023
Image: Princeton, Harvard, and MIT are the top three in US News' rankings of national universities.
In 2023, Columbia University announced that it would no longer be participating in US News’ college rankings. At the time, the conventional interpretation of Columbia’s withdrawal was that it signaled the incoming demise of US News’ college rankings. Yet to date, no other elite undergraduate university has followed Columbia in withdrawing from US News’ undergraduate... Read More

The Inane Indignation Around Sellers’ Inflation

By Dylan Gyauch-Lewis
July 21, 2023
Image: The name most associated with the theory of sellers' inflation is Isabella Weber, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts.
Over the past two years, heterodox economic theory has burst into the public eye more than ever as conventional macroeconomic models have failed to explain the economy we’ve been living in since 2020. In particular, theories around consolidation and corporate power as factors in macroeconomic trends–from neo-Brandeisian antitrust policy to theories of profit seeking as... Read More

Vertical Merger Scrutiny Needs an Upgrade After Microsoft-Activision

By Lee Hepner
July 17, 2023
Image: The FTC is appealing the district court's decision in Microsoft/Acitivision. (Image: Shutterstock)
The Federal Trade Commission’s scrutiny of Microsoft’s acquisition of game producer Activision-Blizzard did not end as planned. Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, a Biden appointee, denied the FTC’s motion for preliminary injunction, ruling that the merger was in the public interest. At the time of this writing, the FTC has pursued an appeal of that decision... Read More

The Ninth Circuit’s Grave Mistake in Epic v. Apple

By Mark Glick
July 2, 2023
Image: There is virtually no evidence that patents and copyrights, particularly in software, incentivize or create innovation.
For those not steeped in antitrust law’s treatment of single-firm monopolization cases, under the rule-of-reason framework, a plaintiff must first demonstrate that the challenged conduct by the defendant is anticompetitive; if successful, the burden shifts to the defendant in the second or balancing stage to justify the restraints on efficiency grounds. According to research by... Read More

What To Do About Google’s Dominance of Online Advertising

By Tim Cowen
September 13, 2023
Image: Kent Walker, President of Global Affairs and Chief legal officer of Alphabet Inc., arrives at federal court on September 12, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
As the DOJ’s antitrust case against Google begins, all eyes are focused on whether Google violated antitrust law by, among other things, entering into exclusionary agreements with equipment makers like Apple and Samsung or web browsers like Mozilla. Per the District Court’s Memorandum Opinion, released August 4, “These agreements make Google the default search engine... Read More

The States Can Put the Brakes on Hospital Mergers

By Justin Stofferahn
August 30, 2023

In July, a proposed $13 billion mega-merger between Sanford Health, the largest rural health system in the county, and Fairview Health Services, one of the largest systems in Minnesota’s Twin Cities metro, was called off. Abandonment of the merger came after concerted opposition from farmers, healthcare workers, and medical students, emboldened by passage of state... Read More

Image: The initial legislative activity around the Sanford-Fairview merger leveraged the work by Attorney General (AG) Keith Ellison when the transaction was first announced. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The New Merger Guidelines Offer an Important Course Correction on Merger Enforcement

By Hal Singer
August 22, 2023

If I were to draft new Merger Guidelines, I’d begin with two questions: (1) What have been the biggest failures of merger enforcement since the 1982 revision to the Merger Guidelines?; and (2) What can we do to prevent such failures going forward? The costs of under-enforcement have been large and well-documented, and include but... Read More

Image: The new Merger Guidelines offer precisely the kind of guidance that would have prevented the courts in T-Mobile/Sprint and in Facebook/Within from committing significant errors.

The Uninteresting and Retracted Piece from That Other Competition Site

By Darren Bush, Mark Glick, and Gabriel A. Lozada
August 14, 2023

This piece originally appeared in ProMarket but was subsequently retracted, with the following blurb (agreed-upon language between ProMarket’s Luigi Zingales and the authors): “ProMarket published the article “The Antitrust Output Goal Cannot Measure Welfare.” The main claim of the article was that “a shift out in a production possibility frontier does not necessarily increase welfare, as... Read More

Although the New Merger Guidelines Should Be Applauded, There Is Still Room for Improvement

By Darren Bush, Mark Glick, Pavitra Govindan and Gabriel A. Lozada
August 9, 2023

The New Merger Guidelines (the “Guidelines”) provide a framework for analyzing when proposed mergers likely violate Section 7 of the Clayton Act that is more faithful to controlling law and Congressional intent than earlier Guidelines. The thirteen guidelines presented in the new Guidelines go quite a long way in pulling the Agencies back from an... Read More

Image: The new Merger Guidelines offer precisely the kind of guidance that would have prevented the courts in T-Mobile/Sprint and in Facebook/Within from committing significant errors.

Is US News a Vital Hub for Collusion Among the Elite Colleges?

By Sahaj Sharda
July 26, 2023

In 2023, Columbia University announced that it would no longer be participating in US News’ college rankings. At the time, the conventional interpretation of Columbia’s withdrawal was that it signaled the incoming demise of US News’ college rankings. Yet to date, no other elite undergraduate university has followed Columbia in withdrawing from US News’ undergraduate... Read More

Image: Princeton, Harvard, and MIT are the top three in US News' rankings of national universities.

The Inane Indignation Around Sellers’ Inflation

By Dylan Gyauch-Lewis
July 21, 2023

Over the past two years, heterodox economic theory has burst into the public eye more than ever as conventional macroeconomic models have failed to explain the economy we’ve been living in since 2020. In particular, theories around consolidation and corporate power as factors in macroeconomic trends–from neo-Brandeisian antitrust policy to theories of profit seeking as... Read More

Image: The name most associated with the theory of sellers' inflation is Isabella Weber, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts.

Vertical Merger Scrutiny Needs an Upgrade After Microsoft-Activision

By Lee Hepner
July 17, 2023

The Federal Trade Commission’s scrutiny of Microsoft’s acquisition of game producer Activision-Blizzard did not end as planned. Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, a Biden appointee, denied the FTC’s motion for preliminary injunction, ruling that the merger was in the public interest. At the time of this writing, the FTC has pursued an appeal of that decision... Read More

Image: The FTC is appealing the district court's decision in Microsoft/Acitivision. (Image: Shutterstock)

The Ninth Circuit’s Grave Mistake in Epic v. Apple

By Mark Glick
July 2, 2023

For those not steeped in antitrust law’s treatment of single-firm monopolization cases, under the rule-of-reason framework, a plaintiff must first demonstrate that the challenged conduct by the defendant is anticompetitive; if successful, the burden shifts to the defendant in the second or balancing stage to justify the restraints on efficiency grounds. According to research by... Read More

Image: There is virtually no evidence that patents and copyrights, particularly in software, incentivize or create innovation.

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