My musings on Twitter are mostly a stream of poking fun of corporatist takes in The New York Times or The Economist. Every once in a while, for reasons that are impossible to understand, a tweet takes off, like this one, which mocked a far-fetched inflation theory propagated in a guest essay for the Times... Read More
Image: That Rogoff continues to be treated as a credible voice on economic issues is a striking indictment of our media ecosystem. (Photograph: Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images)
Did you ever notice that the same neoliberal economists are quoted routinely by economics reporters in the mainstream press? Take Ken Rogoff. He guest authors pieces on public policy at Brookings, is a professor at Harvard, semi-frequently authors op-eds, and is widely quoted in the media. While not quite as high profile as his colleagues... Read More
By Megan Gray
June 18, 2024
Image: Memes of “Dark Brandon” as a mastermind began on the online fringes but have been co-opted by the White House. Source: @joebiden on Twitter.
Are the curtains closing on TikTok? The sudden arrival on stage of the TikTok Divest-or-Ban law would seem to indicate so. TikTok’s rivalrous understudies—especially Facebook and Google—wait impatiently in the wings, salivating over the prospect of capturing the company, its users, or, most tantalizing, its advertisers’ dollars.[1] But peek behind the curtain and you might... Read More
Image: Access to Google’s relevance engine is key to restoring competition in search and related advertising markets.
The Justice Department’s pending antitrust case against Google, in which the search giant is accused of illegally monopolizing the market for online search and related advertising, revealed the nature and extent of a revenue sharing agreement (“RSA”) between Google and Apple. Pursuant to the RSA, Apple gets 36 percent of advertising revenue from Google searches... Read More
Image: Ever since the courts embraced Robert Bork’s revisionist history of antitrust’s goals, consumer welfare became antitrust’s loadstar.
Neoliberal columnist Matt Yglesias recently weighed into antitrust policy in Bloomberg, claiming falsely that the “hipsters” in charge of Biden’s antitrust agencies were abandoning consumers and the war on high prices. Yglesias thinks this deviation from consumer welfare makes for bad policy during our inflationary moment. I have a thread that explains all the things... Read More
Image: Disciples of consumer welfare believe low prices and higher output are the goals of antitrust.
There is a tension in the discourse as to the purpose of antitrust policy. In one camp, consumer welfare still reigns supreme. In another, there is greater acceptance that the consumer welfare standard is flawed, or at least controversial. Disciples of the first camp argue that antitrust policy should focus exclusively on increasing output as... Read More
By Hal Singer
May 28, 2024
Image: The hypothetical monopolist test (HMT) serves as a shiny bright object, distracting the court from the anticompetitive harms.
Your intrepid writer, when not toiling for free in the basement of The Sling, does a fair amount of testifying as an expert economic witness. Many of these cases involve alleged price-fixing (or wage-fixing) conspiracies. One would think there would be no need to define the relevant market in such cases, as the law condemns... Read More
Image: Austin Frerick is the author of the book "Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry," out later this month.
Austin Frerick is the author of the book Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry, out later this month, which explores the powerful corporations that monopolize entire sectors of the U.S. food system: from pork, beef, and dairy, to grains, coffee, berries, and grocery stores. In his book, Frerick illuminates the ugly... Read More
Image: Angus Deaton's Economics in America explores the causes of inequality and offers a roadmap how to tame it.
After about a decade of teaching, it finally occurred to me that interviewing an accomplished economist (or economic critic) would be more entertaining—and hopefully more educational—than asking students to listen to me wax on about economic expert “war stories” for two hours. Also, by inviting a book author, I could compel students to digest the... Read More
Image: Companies like Uber have fought tooth and nail to preserve their workers’ independent contractor status. (Jacob Lund/Getty Images)
As the name implies, Congress passed the antitrust laws to remedy the problem of the trusts—the great agglomerations of capital harming working people. Yet, from that very beginning, the forces of corporate power and oligarchy have used the antitrust laws to attack working people. When the federal government first deployed the antitrust laws against coordinated... Read More
My musings on Twitter are mostly a stream of poking fun of corporatist takes in The New York Times or The Economist. Every once in a while, for reasons that are impossible to understand, a tweet takes off, like this one, which mocked a far-fetched inflation theory propagated in a guest essay for the Times... Read More
Did you ever notice that the same neoliberal economists are quoted routinely by economics reporters in the mainstream press? Take Ken Rogoff. He guest authors pieces on public policy at Brookings, is a professor at Harvard, semi-frequently authors op-eds, and is widely quoted in the media. While not quite as high profile as his colleagues... Read More
Image: That Rogoff continues to be treated as a credible voice on economic issues is a striking indictment of our media ecosystem. (Photograph: Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images)
Are the curtains closing on TikTok? The sudden arrival on stage of the TikTok Divest-or-Ban law would seem to indicate so. TikTok’s rivalrous understudies—especially Facebook and Google—wait impatiently in the wings, salivating over the prospect of capturing the company, its users, or, most tantalizing, its advertisers’ dollars.[1] But peek behind the curtain and you might... Read More
Image: Memes of “Dark Brandon” as a mastermind began on the online fringes but have been co-opted by the White House. Source: @joebiden on Twitter.
The Justice Department’s pending antitrust case against Google, in which the search giant is accused of illegally monopolizing the market for online search and related advertising, revealed the nature and extent of a revenue sharing agreement (“RSA”) between Google and Apple. Pursuant to the RSA, Apple gets 36 percent of advertising revenue from Google searches... Read More
Image: Access to Google’s relevance engine is key to restoring competition in search and related advertising markets.
Neoliberal columnist Matt Yglesias recently weighed into antitrust policy in Bloomberg, claiming falsely that the “hipsters” in charge of Biden’s antitrust agencies were abandoning consumers and the war on high prices. Yglesias thinks this deviation from consumer welfare makes for bad policy during our inflationary moment. I have a thread that explains all the things... Read More
Image: Ever since the courts embraced Robert Bork’s revisionist history of antitrust’s goals, consumer welfare became antitrust’s loadstar.
There is a tension in the discourse as to the purpose of antitrust policy. In one camp, consumer welfare still reigns supreme. In another, there is greater acceptance that the consumer welfare standard is flawed, or at least controversial. Disciples of the first camp argue that antitrust policy should focus exclusively on increasing output as... Read More
Image: Disciples of consumer welfare believe low prices and higher output are the goals of antitrust.
Your intrepid writer, when not toiling for free in the basement of The Sling, does a fair amount of testifying as an expert economic witness. Many of these cases involve alleged price-fixing (or wage-fixing) conspiracies. One would think there would be no need to define the relevant market in such cases, as the law condemns... Read More
Image: The hypothetical monopolist test (HMT) serves as a shiny bright object, distracting the court from the anticompetitive harms.
Austin Frerick is the author of the book Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry, out later this month, which explores the powerful corporations that monopolize entire sectors of the U.S. food system: from pork, beef, and dairy, to grains, coffee, berries, and grocery stores. In his book, Frerick illuminates the ugly... Read More
Image: Austin Frerick is the author of the book "Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry," out later this month.
After about a decade of teaching, it finally occurred to me that interviewing an accomplished economist (or economic critic) would be more entertaining—and hopefully more educational—than asking students to listen to me wax on about economic expert “war stories” for two hours. Also, by inviting a book author, I could compel students to digest the... Read More
Image: Angus Deaton's Economics in America explores the causes of inequality and offers a roadmap how to tame it.
As the name implies, Congress passed the antitrust laws to remedy the problem of the trusts—the great agglomerations of capital harming working people. Yet, from that very beginning, the forces of corporate power and oligarchy have used the antitrust laws to attack working people. When the federal government first deployed the antitrust laws against coordinated... Read More
Image: Companies like Uber have fought tooth and nail to preserve their workers’ independent contractor status. (Jacob Lund/Getty Images)
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