Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons^™

Digital Cluster Markets, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

This paper considers the role of “cluster” markets in antitrust litigation, the minimum requirements for recognizing such markets, and the relevance of network effects in identifying them.

One foundational requirement of markets in antitrust cases is that they consist of products that are very close substitutes for one another. Even though markets are nearly always porous, this principle is very robust in antitrust analysis and there are few deviations.

Nevertheless, clustering noncompeting products into a single market for purposes of antitrust analysis can be valuable, provided that its limitations are understood. Clustering contributes to market power when (1) many customers …

Rethinking Breakups, Hiba Hafiz

Boston College Law School Faculty Papers

Trust-busting is once again a subject of national attention. And the attention is well-deserved: unprecedented levels of corporate concentration, firm dominance, and inequality demand robust debate about how antitrust solutions can ensure that our economy works for everyone. One simple remedy to “bigness” has stolen the spotlight within that debate—“breaking up” big firms into smaller ones to decrease corporate power and lower prices. But calls to break up firms from Big Tech to Big Ag have focused on how breakups could benefit consumers and, in some cases, small businesses. Absent from these debates is how breakups benefit or harm the …

Rebuilding Platform Antitrust: Moving On From Ohio V. American Express, Steven C. Salop, Daniel Francis, Lauren Sillman, Michaela Spero

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Now that the immediate fallout from the Supreme Court’s blockbuster Amex decision has cooled, this Article aims to give a first draft of its place in antitrust history and to offer a roadmap for the next stage of the evolution of platform antitrust analysis. We focus on several issues that have not been fully analyzed in the literature. First, we argue that, rather than mangling the law of market definition, the Court should have explicitly permitted multi-market balancing of effects across the separate markets in which the platform was active. Second, we propose standards to implement such balancing in cases …

Ethnically Segmented Markets: Korean-Owned Black Hair Stores, Felix B. Chang

Indiana Law Journal

Races often collide in segmented markets where buyers belong to one ethnic group while sellers belong to another. This Article examines one such market: the retail of wigs and hair extensions for African Americans, a multi-billion-dollar market controlled by Korean Americans. Although prior scholarship attributed the success of Korean American ventures to rotating communal credit, this Article argues that their dominance in ethnic beauty supplies stems from collusion and exclusion.

This Article is the first to synthesize the disparate treatment of ethnically segmented markets in law, sociology, and economics into a comprehensive framework. Its primary contribution is to forge the …

Charting The Reform Path, Sanjukta Paul

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Inequality and the Labor Market: The Case for Greater Competition. Edited by Sharon Block and Benjamin H. Harris.

The Rise Of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, Their Effects, And How We Can Stop Their Growth, Andrea Prisco

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Dramatic changes in the agricultural industry over the last century have led to the rise of concentrated animal feeding operations– industrial facilities that raise a large number of animals in confined spaces. Animals raised in these facilities suffer from poor quality of life and abuse. For humans, these facilities have had adverse effects on the environment and public health, but they are also associated with high productivity and low food costs. This Comment analyzes the effects of concentrated animal feeding operations on animal well-being, the environment, and public health. This Comment also analyzes current federal legislation that helps combat the …

The Brand Defense, Hiba Hafiz

Boston College Law School Faculty Papers

Declining worker power—and increasing employer power—has suppressed wage growth and increased inequality. This decline is reinforced by contradictions in law that strengthen employers’ bargaining leverage over workers. This Article exposes those contradictions, tracing how employers have exploited the consumer rights revolution to devise brand protections and defenses that justify their control over vertically disintegrated labor markets. The Article takes a systemic view of intellectual property, antitrust, and work law to uncover their interconnected protection of employers’ brand rights at the expense of worker power. Based on the insights derived from this analysis, it proposes a suite of doctrinal and regulatory …

International Trade, Brian Bombassaro, Tessa Capeloto, Sylvia Y. Chen, Dharmendra Choudhary, Shane T. Devins, Laura El-Sabaawi, Cynthia Galvez, Geoffrey Goodale, Sahar Hafeez, Alexandra Landis, Ying Lin, Elizabeth Lee, Cynthia Liu, Diane Macdonald, Yujin K. Mcnamara, David Sella-Villa, Sarah Sprinkle

The Year in Review

No abstract provided.

International Antitrust, Miguel Del Pino, Elizabeth M. Avery, Sally Kirk, Adam S. Goodman, Peter Wang, Yizhe Zhang, Laurie-Ann Grelier, Peter Camesasca, Vinod Dhall, Mansi Tewari, Shigeyoshi ., Youngjin Jung, Anderson Mori & Tomotsune, Gina Jeehyun Choi, Lara Granville, Jonathan Tickner, Jasvinder Nakhwal, Lisl Dunlap

The Year in Review

No abstract provided.

The Dawn Of A New Era: Antitrust Law Vs. The Antiquated Ncaa Compensation Model Perpetuating Racial Injustice, Amanda L. Jones

Northwestern University Law Review

Two crises in 2020 fueled the fire underlying a debate that has been smoldering for years: whether student athletes should be compensated. The COVID-19 pandemic coincided with the Black Lives Matter movement and drew unprecedented attention to systemic racism permeating society, including college sports that rely disproportionately on Black men risking physical harm to support an entire industry. The Supreme Court’s decision in NCAA v. Alston opened the door for some athletic conferences to offer student athletes unlimited education-related benefits and called out the NCAA’s business model that relies on not paying student athletes under the justification of amateurism. Alston …

Modeling The Caselaw Access Project: Lessons For Market Power And The Antitrust–Regulation Balance, Felix B. Chang, Erin Mccabe, James Lee

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Sovereignty 2.0, Anupam Chander, Haochen Sun

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Digital sovereignty-the exercise of control over the internet-is the ambition of the world's leaders, from Australia to Zimbabwe, seen as a bulwark against both foreign states and foreign corporations. Governments have resoundingly answered first-generation internet law questions of who, if anyone, should regulate the internet. The answer: they all will. Governments now confront second-generation questions--not whether, but how to regulate the internet. This Article argues that digital sovereignty is simultaneously a necessary incident of democratic governance and democracy's dreaded antagonist. As international law scholar Louis Henkin taught, sovereignty can insulate a government's worst ills from foreign intrusion. Assertions of digital …

Blockchain Technology For Good, Wulf A. Kaal

University of St. Thomas Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Lessons Covid-19 Taught: How The Global Pandemic Demonstrated That State Healthcare Regulations Can Kill, Devon Allgood

Brooklyn Law Review

Certificate of Need (CON) laws are designed to lower the cost of healthcare and have been a staple of American law for over half a century. In the most basic sense, CON laws require that medical providers receive the government’s permission to build a new healthcare facility, purchase major medical equipment, add or remove services, and in some cases, change their hours of operation. These requirements are designed to lower the price of healthcare by limiting competition and barring providers from investing in services or equipment that are deemed “unnecessary” by the government, thus preventing these providers from passing the …

2022 Mlb Lockout: Time To Re-Examine Baseball's Antitrust Exemption, Adam Renfro

SLU Law Journal Online

In this article, Adam Renfro examines the legal basis for Major League Baseball's antitrust exemption in light of ongoing lockout in Major League Baseball. This article also discusses ongoing and current threats to the exemption and asserts that the exemption should be abolished once and for all.

Megacorporations Are Jacking Up Prices 'Because They Can,' Pushing Red-Hot Inflation To Historic Levels, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

This article argues that corporations may be taking advantages of supply chain bottlenecks and shortages to collude and raise prices illegally. Although price fixing is illegal, the current levels of penalties are far too low. This gives firms an incentive to collude. Before the pandemic, when inflation was low, consumers and the antitrust enforcers would have been more likely to notice any sudden price increases and investigate whether they were caused by collusion. But using bottlenecks and shortages as cover, companies can take advantage of their years of consolidation and collude more easily with less chance of it being detected. …

Federally Mandated Online Sales Tax: A Logistical Solution For The Future Of E-Commerce, Daniel O'Connor

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Economic Structural Transformation And Litigation: Evidence From Chinese Provinces, To Economic Change And Restructuring, Doug Bujakowski, Joan Schmit

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The "Business Interruption" Insurance Coverage Conundrum: Covid-19 Presents A Challenge, Paul E. Traynor

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Misalighned Incentives In Markets: Envisioning Finance That Benefits All Of Society, Dr. Ryan Clements

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.