Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons^™

Is Antitrust's Consumer Welfare Principle Imperiled?, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

Faculty Scholarship

Antitrust’s consumer welfare principle stands for the proposition that antitrust policy should encourage markets to produce output as high as is consistent with sustainable competition, and prices that are accordingly as low. Such a policy does not protect every interest group. For example, it opposes the interests of cartels or other competition-limiting associations who profit from lower output and higher prices. It also runs counter to the interest of less competitive firms that need higher prices in order to survive. Market structure is relevant to antitrust policy, but its importance is contingent rather than absolute – that is, market structure ...

Talent Can't Be Allocated: A Labor Economics Justification For No-Poaching Agreement Criminality In Antitrust Regulation, Rochella T. Davis

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

As of late, labor markets have been a focus point in antitrust enforcement. In 2016 the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced an unprecedented policy to pursue no-poaching agreements criminally. More recently, in January 2018, the DOJ’s Attorney General indicated that the agency is following through on the policy. This Article argues that the DOJ’s new policy is logical and prudent because the economic effects that no-poaching agreements have on labor markets mirror the anticompetitive effects of customer allocation agreements. It also shows that the policy is well-supported by labor economics and antitrust policies. In efforts to comply with ...

Has The Academy Led Patent Law Astray?, Jonathan M. Barnett

University of Southern California Legal Studies Working Paper Series

Scholarly commentary widely asserts that technology markets suffer from a triplet of adverse effect arising from the strong patent regime associated with the establishment of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in 1982: "patent" thickets burdening innovation with transaction and litigation costs; "patent holdup" resulting in excessive payouts to opportunistic patent holders; and "royalty stacking" causing exorbitant patent licensing fees. Together these effects purportedly depress innovation and inflate prices for end-users. These repeated assertions are inconsistent with the continuing robust output, declining prices, and rapid innovation observed in the most patent-intensive technology markets during the more that three ...

Regulation And The Marginalist Revolution, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

Faculty Scholarship

The marginalist revolution in economics became the foundation for the modern regulatory State with its “mixed” economy. Marginalism, whose development defines the boundary between classical political economy and neoclassical economics, completely overturned economists’ theory of value. It developed in the late nineteenth century in England, the Continent and the United States. For the classical political economists, value was a function of past averages. One good example is the wage-fund theory, which saw the optimal rate of wages as a function of the firm’s ability to save from previous profits. Another is the theory of corporate finance, which assessed a ...

Trading Goods For Bad: Is Public Policy Undermined By Investor State Dispute Mechanisms?, Michelle C. Perez

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Keynote Address To The Atlas Conference: “International Business Disputes In An Era Of Receding Globalism”, Lord Peter H. Goldsmith Qc, Pc

Georgia State University Law Review

This is a transcript of the luncheon keynote address by Lord Peter Goldsmith at the Sixth Annual Conference of the Atlanta International Arbitration Society (AtlAS) on October 23, 2017.

Lord Peter Goldsmith QC, PC, is London Co-Managing Partner and Chair of European and Asian Litigation at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. He joined the firm after serving as the UK’s Attorney General from 2001-2007, prior to which he was in private practice as one of the leading barristers in London.

Lord Goldsmith has a long practice in arbitration and in the interface between arbitration and litigation. He appears as counsel for ...

China's Anti-Corruption Crackdown And The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Daniel C.K. Chow

Texas A&M Law Review

China’s highly publicized crackdown on corruption may affect the type and number of cases in China that arise under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”), but it should not be assumed that the crackdown will necessarily lead to fewer FCPA prosecutions. Although there is some overlap of the goals of China’s corruption crackdown and the goals of the FCPA, China’s crackdown also serves important goals of the ruling Communist Party. The main goal of the current crackdown is to reinforce the Party’s power by targeting enemies and rivals of the current leadership. The crackdown is not ...

Market Power And American Express, John B. Kirkwood

University of Miami Business Law Review

The Second Circuit ruled that American Express did not have market power because it operated in a two-sided market and any leverage it exercised over merchants derived from its successful competition for cardholders. As a result, the relevant market had to include both sides of a credit card transaction, the company’s market share was modest, and it could not exploit both merchants and cardholders. In Market Power and Antitrust Enforcement (forthcoming in B.U. L. REV.), I propose a new approach that infers market power from the likely effects of the challenged conduct. This approach shows that American Express ...

Assessing The Competitive Effects Of Surcharging The Use Of Payment Mechanisms, Steven Semeraro

University of Miami Business Law Review

The Department of Justice’s theory of liability in its case attacking the non–discrimination provisions in American Express’s merchant contracts contends that point–of–sale competition on the price of making a purchase with a credit card is an instrument creating economic efficiency. That is, the economy would run more efficiently, and consumers would be better off, if merchants were free to charge variable prices for different types of credit cards. After all, charging different prices for using different types of payment mechanisms appears to be just another form of presumptively positive price competition.

The Second Circuit rejected ...

Applying The Rule Of Reason To Two–Sided Platform Businesses, David S. Evans, Richard Schmalensee

University of Miami Business Law Review

In recent years, the federal courts’ analysis of the competitive effects of conduct challenged under the Sherman Act’s rule of reason, which generally includes market definition as a critical step, has been properly guided by sensitivity to business reality and sound economic analysis of the conduct at issue. When it comes to two–sided platforms, the courts should adhere to that same flexible but principled approach and avoid rigid alternatives that would apply regardless of the platform, conduct, or fact–pattern.

In Ohio v. American Express Co., (Case No. 16–1454), now before the U.S. Supreme Court, the ...

Comment On The Draft Report Of The Icca/Queen Mary Task Force On Third Party Funding In International Arbitration, Frank J. Garcia

Boston College Law School Faculty Papers

No abstract provided.

The Case Against Third-Party Funding In Isds: Executive Summary, Frank J. Garcia, Hyun Ju Cho, Tara Santosuosso, Randall Scarlett, Rachel Denae Thrasher

Boston College Law School Faculty Papers

No abstract provided.

The Case For An Eu Protagonist Role On Third Party Funding Regulation, Munia El Harti Alonso

Law and Justice in the Americas Working Paper Series

The Lisbon Treaty has enlarged the EU’s competences in external investment policy. The EU could thus increase its protagonist role in third-party funding (TPF) regulation in a manner analogous to its achievements in the investment regime, where the EU managed to rally the member states behind DG Trade’s vision. A treaty-based analysis combined with a political evaluation suggest the EU is expanding its field of competences either when it has a clear mandate or by establishing a modus vivendi as it has been the case with its external relations, particularly at the United Nations. There is therefore a ...

Third-Party Funding As Exploitation Of The Investment Treaty System, Frank J. Garcia

Boston College Law School Faculty Papers

No abstract provided.

Third-Party Funding In Investment Arbitration: Misappropriation Of Access To Justice Rhetoric By Global Speculative Finance, Tara Santosuosso, Randall Scarlett

Law and Justice in the Americas Working Paper Series

No abstract provided.

The Regulation Of Third Party Funding: Gathering Data For Future Analysis And Reform, Rachel Denae Thrasher

Law and Justice in the Americas Working Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Law School News: 'Marketplace Of Ideas' Imperiled (04-05-2018), David A. Logan

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

An Examination Of Product Hopping By Brand-Name Prescription Drug Manufacturers: The Problem And A Proposed Solution, Daniel Burke

Cleveland State Law Review

The balance between incentivizing innovation through exclusivity protection and maintaining competitive market conditions—including prices for consumers—is a difficult line to toe. Product hopping has characteristics that constitute a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act because companies can maintain monopoly power in the pharmaceutical market. While some monopoly power is justified as an incentive for incredibly costly innovation, extended periods of exclusivity harms consumers by keeping prescription drug prices artificially inflated. Allowing generic drug manufacturers to compete sooner in the prescription drug market by disallowing product hopping by name-brand pharmaceutical drug companies will aid in driving down prices. Courts ...

X-Inefficiency In Monopolies, Emily Nowlan

HON499 projects

This paper takes a case study approach to studying the efficiency and causes of decline for monopoly firms. The focus of the analysis will be on two firms: IBM, and Xerox. The main causes of failure studied will be financial issues, mismanagement, and regulatory cases. One theory is that, as monopolies operate, one begins to see a differential between growth of profits and expenditures. Thus, the firms become “fat and slow.” The company may also become bogged down with overhead, attempting to maintain unsustainable and unnecessary levels of employment. Compounding this issue, many managers fail to accurately predict the movement ...

Healthcare Mergers And Acquisitions In An Era Of Consolidation: A Review And A Call For Agency Collaboration In Antitrust Enforcement, Anna Molinari

Pepperdine Law Review

Healthcare companies are consolidating at an alarming rate. From hospitals, to providers’ offices, to insurance companies, there are increasingly fewer consumer choices and more monopolies, which calls for heightened antitrust enforcement. Interestingly, antitrust enforcement authority in the healthcare industry is shared between the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which presides over hospital and provider mergers, and the Department of Justice (DOJ), which presides over health insurance mergers. Although the FTC has challenged many hospital and provider mergers, the DOJ has only challenged six health insurance mergers. Furthermore, last year, the DOJ ultimately approved all health insurance mergers. In 2017, in United ...