Law Commons^™

Protecting And Fostering Online Platform Competition: The Role Of Antitrust Law, Jonathan Baker

Contributions to Books

This essay provides a perspective on the role of antitrust law in protecting and fostering competition in the digital economy, with particular attention to online platforms. It highlights the danger of anti-competitive exclusionary conduct by dominant online platforms and describes ways that antitrust law can challenge and deter such conduct. The essay also identifies a number of difficulties that U.S. courts and enforcers face in challenging harmful exclusionary conduct by dominant platforms, and discusses some ways regulation can supplement antitrust law in fostering competition.

Cartel Ringmaster Or Competition Creator? The Ebooks Case Against Apple (2013), Jonathan Baker

Contributions to Books

In 2013, a federal district court found that Apple had orchestrated a cartel agreement involving it and five major book publishers three years earlier, when Apple opened the iBookstore in conjunction with the introduction of its iPad tablet computer. According to the court, Apple organized collective action by the publishers to take away ebook pricing authority from Amazon, an aggressive discounter, and to raise the retail prices of ebooks.

This chapter describes the case from an economic point of view. It examines the competing views of the government and Apple over the competitive impact of various provisions in the iBookstore’s …

Channeling And Contending With Bill Kovacic, Jonathan Baker

Contributions to Books

This essay was written for a festschrift in honor of Professor William E. Kovacic. It discusses Prof. Kovacic’s work on the design of antitrust enforcement institutions, the interplay between the Chicago and Harvard schools in the transformation of antitrust that took place a generation ago, and the extent to which antitrust norms exhibit continuity over time. It will published in "William E. Kovacic - Liber Amicorum: An Antitrust Tribute - Vol. II," which is scheduled to be released in February 2014 by the Institute of Competition Law.

International Investments Arbitration: Winning, Losing And Why, Susan D. Franck

Contributions to Books

In late 2008, as financial markets were crashing, the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment launched the Columbia FDI Perspectives. The first Perspective, entitled “The FDI recession has begun,” correctly forecast an FDI recession in the following year. From that first Perspective in late 2008 to the end of 2010, the series published thirty-three concise notes on topical FDI-related issues by diverse experts in the field. The purpose of these Perspectives is to inform readers about some of the important issues and trends in the contemporary debate on FDI, and to promote a wide-ranging discussion about the policy implications …

Using Competition Law To Promote Access To Knowledge, Sean Flynn

Contributions to Books

One of the points of convergence among the many strands of the A2K movement is resistance to the one-size-fits-all ratcheting up of intellectual property provisions around the world. The resistance is grounded in analysis showing that intellectual property rules often create social costs that far outweigh their intended benefits. Much of the A2K movement’s advocacy for limitations of intellectual property rights is located within the field of intellectual property law – promoting the inclusion and use of balancing mechanisms within the laws granting intellectual property rights. But intellectual property rights are also shaped and limited by their interaction with other …

Challenges Facing Investment Disputes: Reconsidering Dispute Resolution In International Investment Agreements, Susan Franck

Contributions to Books

International investment and international investment agreements have experienced a particular level of growth in the past few decades. With that growth and the granting of affirmative dispute resolution rights to foreign investors, international investment conflict has become increasingly highlighted; and one particular methodology - namely investment treaty arbitration - has become particularly visible. Reliance on this single option for resolving conflict has a unique set of systemic implications. This chapter therefore takes a more systemic look at investment treaty conflict and, in an effort to provide an appropriate historical and doctrinal framework, approaches to dispute resolution broadly. It asks for …

Efficiencies And High Concentration: Heinz Proposes To Acquire Bech-Nut (2001), Jonathan Baker

Contributions to Books

This chapter discusses the FTC’s court challenge, in 2001, to the proposed merger of two baby food producers, Heinz and Beech-Nut. The chapter describes the economic issues at stake in the litigation, with a particular focus on the possibility that efficiencies could justify a merger in an industry in which post-merger concentration would be high.

A Turning Point In Merger Enforcement: Federal Trade Commission V. Staples, Jonathan B. Baker, Robert Pitofsky

Contributions to Books

This book chapter (forthcoming in Antitrust Stories) tells the story of the FTC's successful 1997 effort to block the proposed Staples/Office Depot merger. It describes the competing presentations of the FTC and the merging firms during the preliminary injunction hearing and places that trial in a broader context.

Horizontal Merger Analysis Grows Up: A Review Of Chapter 5 Of Richard Posner’S Antitrust Law (2d Ed. 2001), Jonathan Baker

Contributions to Books

Richard Posner is a central figure in the generation of brilliant lawyers and economists who created the Chicago school of antitrust. Since the first edition of Posner’s Antitrust Law was published in 1976, most of the field has been transformed, in many respects along the very lines he proposed, and at times with a helpful decision from now—Judge Posner pushing that movement along. But horizontal merger law, while revolutionized by the Chicago school’s signature economic approach, has not changed in the precise manner Posner advocated a quarter century ago. Now, with the publication of the second edition of Antitrust Law, …

Book Review: Economics And Anitrust Policy, Jonathan Baker

Contributions to Books

Book review of Economics and Antitrust Policy (R. Lamer and J. Meehan, Jr., eds) (Westport, CT) (Publisher:Quorum Books) (1989), 250 pp.