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The At&T/Time Warner Merger: How Judge Leon Garbled Professor Nash, Steven C. Salop
The At&T/Time Warner Merger: How Judge Leon Garbled Professor Nash, Steven C. Salop
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The US District Court in the AT&T/Time Warner vertical merger case has issued its opinion permitting the merger. At of this writing in August 2018, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has appealed to the DC Circuit and filed its brief, as have several Amici. I was disappointed that the DOJ was unable to prove its case to the satisfaction of Judge Leon, the trial judge. Notwithstanding the court’s confidence that the merger is procompetitive, I remain concerned that it will have anti- competitive effects, both on its own and following the subsequent vertical mergers in the TV industry, which this …
Antitrust's Unconventional Politics, Daniel A. Crane
Antitrust's Unconventional Politics, Daniel A. Crane
Law & Economics Working Papers
For the first time in a generation, political pressure is growing to reform antitrust in a considerably more interventionist direction. To the bafflement of many observers, these political pressures are emerging simultaneously from both wings of the political spectrum. Although unconventional in presentist right/left terms, antitrust's ideological ambiguity has longstanding historical roots. This Essay examines three historical friction points that help explain the current political dislocations around antitrust reform: (1) the coupling of ideological aversion to large scale in government and business; (2) the shifting meaning of the word "monopoly," from exclusive governmentally granted privilege to privately obtained market power; …
The Ideological Roots Of America's Market Power Problem, Lina M. Khan
The Ideological Roots Of America's Market Power Problem, Lina M. Khan
Faculty Scholarship
Mounting research shows that America has a market power problem. In sectors ranging from airlines and poultry to eyeglasses and semiconductors, just a handful of companies dominate. The decline in competition is so consistent across markets that excessive concentration and undue market power now look to be not an isolated issue but rather a systemic feature of America’s political economy. This is troubling because monopolies and oligopolies produce a host of harms. They depress wages and salaries, raise consumer costs, block entrepreneurship, stunt investment, retard innovation, and render supply chains and complex systems highly fragile. Dominant firms’ economic power allows …