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Full-Text Articles in Law
Astroturf Campaigns: Transparency In Telecom Merger Review, Victoria Peng
Astroturf Campaigns: Transparency In Telecom Merger Review, Victoria Peng
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Large telecommunications companies looking to merge spend millions of dollars in their lobbying efforts to clear regulatory hurdles and obtain approval for their proposed mergers. Corporations such as AT&T, Comcast, and Time Warner use public participation processes as vehicles to influence regulatory decision-making. In the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) merger review context, the notice- and-comment process and public hearings have become fertile breeding grounds for hidden corporate influence. Corporations spend millions on corporate social responsibility programs and call upon nonprofit organizations that receive their largesse to represent their corporate interests as grassroots interests when the FCC seeks public comment. This …
Ridding The Law Of Outdated Statutory Exemptions To Antitrust Law: A Proposal For Reform, Anne Mcginnis
Ridding The Law Of Outdated Statutory Exemptions To Antitrust Law: A Proposal For Reform, Anne Mcginnis
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Antitrust law is designed to be an overarching check against anticompetitive conduct that harms the free market system. Almost as soon as the first antitrust laws were enacted in the United States, however, industry groups began lobbying Congress for exemptions from these laws. Most of the statutory exemptions created over the last one hundred years remain in place, despite widespread changes in economic theory, market structures, and overall antitrust law. Today, some exemptions are merely irrelevant, while others actively harm society by transferring wealth to private individuals and hampering beneficial competition. This Note proposes a fourpart legislative solution to rid …
Model-Based Pricing In Hurricane Insurance: A Case Study For Judicial Reform Of The Mccarran-Freguson Act, Benjamin Holland Able
Model-Based Pricing In Hurricane Insurance: A Case Study For Judicial Reform Of The Mccarran-Freguson Act, Benjamin Holland Able
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The McCarran-Ferguson Act (MFA) exempts various aspects of state insurance operations from federal antitrust enforcement. This exemption is a source of longstanding controversy, due in part to its potentially harmful effect on consumers in product pricing. In hurricane insurance, there is a burgeoning debate concerning insurers' use of predictive computer models rather than shared loss data to set premiums for the industry. By using these models in hurricane-prone states, insurers have increased the price of hurricane insurance dramatically. Where these new prediction methods are used, MFA exemption may facilitate supracompetitive pricing in ways its architects could not have foreseen. This …
Market Power In Power Markets: The Filed-Rate Doctrine And Competition In Electricity, Sandeep Vaheesan
Market Power In Power Markets: The Filed-Rate Doctrine And Competition In Electricity, Sandeep Vaheesan
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
State and federal initiatives have opened the American electric power industry to competition over the past four decades. Although the process has not occurred uniformly across the country, wholesale electricity markets exist everywhere today. Independent power producers can construct generation facilities and sell their output to utilities and industrial customers through bilateral contracts. In many regions, centralized power markets now facilitate the sale of billions of dollars in electricity annually through auctions. Although market forces have replaced direct price regulation in electricity, antitrust enforcement has not expanded its role commensurately. A lack of competition has been a serious problem in …
Reevaluating Amateurism Standards In Men's College Basketball, Marc Edelman
Reevaluating Amateurism Standards In Men's College Basketball, Marc Edelman
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This Note argues that courts should interpret NCAA conduct under the Principle of Amateurism as a violation of§ 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act and that courts should order NCAA deregulation of student-athletes' indirect financial activities. Part I of this Note discusses the history of NCAA regulation, specifically its Principle of Amateurism. Part II discusses the current impact of antitrust laws on the NCAA. Part III argues that the NCAA violates antitrust laws because the Principle of Amateurism's overall effect is anticompetitive. Part IV argues the NCAA could institute an amateurism standard with a net pro-competitive effect by allowing student-athletes …
Questioning Traditional Antitrust Presumptions: Price And Non-Price Competition In Hospital Markets, Peter J. Hammer
Questioning Traditional Antitrust Presumptions: Price And Non-Price Competition In Hospital Markets, Peter J. Hammer
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Hospital mergers challenge basic assumptions about the effects of market power in the health care industry. Antitrust courts have struggled with claims that hospital mergers may in fact reduce costs and lower prices. This Article assesses the validity of these economic claims in the context of an industry that has undergone radical transformations in recent years. The Article also explores how such arguments should be treated as a matter of antitrust doctrine in an area of the law that relies heavily on market share presumptions and rule-based decision making. The Article contends that courts should employ a total welfare standard …
Competing On Quality Of Care: The Need To Develop A Competition Policy For Health Care Markets, William M. Sage, Peter J. Hammer
Competing On Quality Of Care: The Need To Develop A Competition Policy For Health Care Markets, William M. Sage, Peter J. Hammer
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
As American health care moves from a professionally dominated to a market-dominated model, concerns have been voiced that competition, once unleashed, will focus on price to the detriment of quality. Although quality has been extensively analyzed in health services research, the role of quality in competition policy has not been elucidated. While economists may theorize about non-price competition, courts in antitrust cases often follow simpler models of competition based on price and output, either ignoring quality as a competitive dimension or assuming that it will occur in tandem with price competition. This unsystematic approach is inadequate for the formulation of …
Reforming Fcc Regulation Of Dominant Telephone Carriers: Putting Some Teeth Into The Test For Predation, Thomas K. Gump
Reforming Fcc Regulation Of Dominant Telephone Carriers: Putting Some Teeth Into The Test For Predation, Thomas K. Gump
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This Note examines the ineffective protections against predatory pricing by AT&T contained in the price cap scheme. Part I outlines price cap regulation and explains how the FCC hopes that a test based on the average variable cost standard will detect predatory pricing. Part II argues that the FCC erred in adopting an average variable cost standard as the test for telecommunications predation because that standard ignores the high fixed costs common to all firms in the industry. Part II demonstrates that AT&T could engage in predatory pricing despite the protections contained in the regulatory scheme. Part II then examines …
Commercial Treaties And Foreign Companies: The Mutually Reinforcing Principles Of Remedial Antitrust And National Treatment, Alan Van Kampen
Commercial Treaties And Foreign Companies: The Mutually Reinforcing Principles Of Remedial Antitrust And National Treatment, Alan Van Kampen
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This Note argues that greater appreciation for the nature and importance of national treatment obligations will compel tribunals fashioning antitrust relief to provide more suitably for foreign firms, and thus avoid straining international trade relations. Moreover, because antitrust relief and national treatment objectives are mutually reinforcing, greater recognition of national treatment requirements should improve remedial orders from the standpoint of antitrust economics. Meeting national treatment requirements should place little added burden on the antitrust tribunal; it must merely extend impartial economic analysis to all market suppliers, not just domestic firms.
This Note explores methods to ensure that antitrust relief orders …
Failing Companies And The Antitrust Laws, Janet L. Mcdavid
Failing Companies And The Antitrust Laws, Janet L. Mcdavid
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This article will examine two areas in which the courts have given financially-troubled companies special treatment under the antitrust laws. Part I discusses the acquisition of a failing company, which may constitute a judicially-created exemption from section 7 of the Clayton Act. Part II considers certain cases involving failing companies whose conduct is challenged under section 1 of the Sherman Act.
Antitrust Law, Competition, And The Macroeconomy, Peter C. Carstensen
Antitrust Law, Competition, And The Macroeconomy, Peter C. Carstensen
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This article examines the links between antitrust law-one possible tool for dealing with economic ills-and macroeconomic structure. It analyzes the current policy and economic assumptions underlying the importance of antitrust enforcement in reaching a healthy, competitive economy and concludes that such enforcement does contribute to the increased effectiveness of macroeconomic tools.
Part I explores the current macroeconomic theories and their policy implications. Part II discusses the related concepts of market power and competition and concludes that dissipation of market power is preferable, but that the regulation of market power may yield significant social and economic benefits in the short run, …
Keys To Unlock The Interlocks: Dealing With Interlocking Directorates, Richard P. Murphy
Keys To Unlock The Interlocks: Dealing With Interlocking Directorates, Richard P. Murphy
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The use of interlocking directorates by American industrial and commercial corporations is widespread. Section 8 of the Clayton Act has been interpreted as prohibiting only interlocks between directly competing firms. There are other kinds of interlocks with substantial anticompetitive effects, however, that have essentially escaped any regulation under the antitrust laws. This article will examine whether the deleterious effects of unregulated interlocks should be a source of concern. It will conclude that these interlocks should not remain unregulated because they are presumptively anticompetitive, produce problems that section 8 was designed to address, and conflict with the basic goals of the …
The Sherman Act And Bar Admission Residence Requirements, Harvey Freedenberg
The Sherman Act And Bar Admission Residence Requirements, Harvey Freedenberg
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This article will focus on the restrictive aspects of residence qualifications for admission to the state bar. Such restrictions are significant in three cases: initial admission to the bar, relocation by a foreign attorney, and multistate practice by an attorney admitted to the bar in another state. An attempt will be made to determine whether these requirements might be invalid under the Sherman Act and to analyze the case for their abolition. The commercial counterpart of professional entry restrictions has been termed "the very essence of monopoly,” and on this basis it is submitted that further freedom from antitrust scrutiny …
Abuse Of Trademarks: A Proposal For Ompulsory Licensing, Mara L. Babin
Abuse Of Trademarks: A Proposal For Ompulsory Licensing, Mara L. Babin
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This article neither deals with the propriety of the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) proposed order nor evaluates the effectiveness of compulsory trademark licensing as a remedy for unfair trade practices.8 Rather, the pending cereal industry case is used as a point of departure for an examination of the problem of trademark abuse and the responses of the courts, the Congress, and the FTC to it. Acknowledging the legality of compulsory licensing of trademarks, the article suggests legislation which will incorporate licensing and standards for its application. Such legislation would make licensing an accessible remedy for trademark abuse while accommodating both …