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Full-Text Articles in Law

Broadening Consumer Law: Competition, Protection, And Distribution, Rory Van Loo Nov 2019

Broadening Consumer Law: Competition, Protection, And Distribution, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

Policymakers and scholars have in distributional conversations traditionally ignored consumer laws, defined as the set of consumer protection, antitrust, and entry barrier laws that govern consumer transactions. Consumer law is overlooked partly because tax law is cast as the most efficient way to redistribute. Another obstacle is that consumer law research speaks to microeconomic and siloed contexts—deceptive fees by Wells Fargo or a proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable. Even removing millions of dollars of deceptive credit card fees across the nation seems trivial compared to the trillion-dollar growth in income inequality that has sparked concern in recent …


Industry Concentration And Information Technology, James Bessen Jun 2019

Industry Concentration And Information Technology, James Bessen

Faculty Scholarship

Industry concentration has been rising in the US since 1980. Does this signal declining competition and need for a new antitrust policy? Or are other factors causing concentration to rise? This paper explores the role of proprietary information technology (IT), which could increase the productivity of top firms relative to others and raise their market share. Instrumental variable estimates find a strong link between proprietary IT and rising industry concentration, accounting for much of its growth. Moreover, the top four firms in each industry benefit disproportionately. Large investments in proprietary software—$250 billion per year—appear to significantly impact industry structure.


Draft Of Fair Use In Oracle: Proximate Cause At The Copyright/Patent Divide - 2019, Wendy J. Gordon Jan 2019

Draft Of Fair Use In Oracle: Proximate Cause At The Copyright/Patent Divide - 2019, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

This Paper was presented at the conference, "A Celebration of the Work of Wendy Gordon," at Boston University school of law on June 14, 2019. In presented an earlier draft under the title, Transformative Use, Proximate Cause, and Copyright, at the University of Texas at Austin on March 23, 2017. Under the title, Inegrating Judge Legal's Theory of Fair Use into on Economic View of Copyright Law: From "proximate Cause" to "Transormative Use," the paper was also presented at the March, 2016, "Conference on IP and Private Law," held at Harvard Law School. I am grateful to …


Price Discrimination & Intellectual Property, Michael J. Meurer, Ben Depoorter Jan 2019

Price Discrimination & Intellectual Property, Michael J. Meurer, Ben Depoorter

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter reviews the law and economics literature on intellectual property law and price discrimination. We introduce legal scholars to the wide range of techniques used by intellectual property owners to practice price discrimination; in many cases the link between commercial practice and price discrimination may not be apparent to non-economists. We introduce economists to the many facets of intellectual property law that influence the profitability and practice of price discrimination. The law in this area has complex effects on customer sorting and arbitrage. Intellectual property law offers fertile ground for analysis of policies that facilitate or discourage price discrimination. …