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Articles 1 - 16 of 16
Full-Text Articles in Law
Digital Market Perfection, Rory Van Loo
Digital Market Perfection, Rory Van Loo
Michigan Law Review
Google’s, Apple’s, and other companies’ automated assistants are increasingly serving as personal shoppers. These digital intermediaries will save us time by purchasing grocery items, transferring bank accounts, and subscribing to cable. The literature has only begun to hint at the paradigm shift needed to navigate the legal risks and rewards of this coming era of automated commerce. This Article begins to fill that gap by surveying legal battles related to contract exit, data access, and deception that will determine the extent to which automated assistants are able to help consumers to search and switch, potentially bringing tremendous societal benefits. Whereas …
Exclusion In Digital Markets, Konstantinos Stylianou
Exclusion In Digital Markets, Konstantinos Stylianou
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
This article recasts the existing analytical framework on exclusion to account for the technology-intensive nature of digital markets. It discusses:
a) technological ways that affect the competitive intensity in digital markets
b) empirical data on the durability of competitive advantage in digital markets, and
c) the nature of exclusion as a monopolization tactic from a technological point of view
The technology element is important because as a matter of order it is technological capabilities and limitations that define what the transactional overlay can be, not the other way around. Economists start from the pre-assumption that “in the beginning there [are] …
Tesla, Dealer Franchise Laws, And The Politics Of Crony Capitalism, Daniel A. Crane
Tesla, Dealer Franchise Laws, And The Politics Of Crony Capitalism, Daniel A. Crane
Articles
Public choice theory has long proclaimed that business interests can capture regulatory processes to generate economic rents at the expense of consumers. Such political exploitation may go unnoticed and unchallenged for long time periods because, though the rents are captured by a relatively small number of individuals or firms, the costs are widely diffused over a large number of consumers. The triggering event to expose and mobilize opposition to the regulatory capture may not arise until a new technology seeks to challenge the incumbent technology, thus creating a motivated champion to expose and oppose the regulatory capture and advocate for …
A Dual Track Approach To Challenging Chinese Censorship In The Wto: The (Future) Case Of Google And Facebook, Anonymous
Michigan Journal of International Law
As economic and trade policies continue to affect more facets of society, the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) impact on government policy and citizens’ lives has grown. Since its creation on January 1, 1995, the WTO has fostered trade liberalization negotiations and served as a forum where member countries can discuss economic concerns with one another. The WTO is perhaps best known for its dispute settlement mechanism. When countries cannot reach a mutual resolution to a conflict governed by a trade agreement, they can initiate formal legal proceedings against one another by asking for a panel to be appointed. The panel …
High-Frequency Trading: Should Regulators Do More, Matt Prewitt
High-Frequency Trading: Should Regulators Do More, Matt Prewitt
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
High-Frequency Trading ("HFT") is a diverse set of algorithmic trading strategies characterized by fast order execution. Its importance in international markets has increased vastly in recent years. From a regulatory perspective, HFT presents difficult and partially unresolved questions. The difficulties stem partly from the fact that HFT encompasses a wide range of trading strategies, and partly from a dearth of unambiguous empirical findings about HFT's effects on markets. Yet certain important conclusions are broadly accepted. HFT can increase systemic risk by causing or exacerbating events like the "Flash Crash" of May 6, 2010. HFT can also enable market manipulators to …
Giving In To Baby Markets: Regulation Without Prohibition, Sonia M. Suter
Giving In To Baby Markets: Regulation Without Prohibition, Sonia M. Suter
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
The commodification of reproductive material evokes different responses. Some argue that the sale of reproductive material should be prohibited. Others argue in favor of unfettered baby markets on principle or to achieve broad-scale access to reproductive technologies. In this Article, the author responds to the emergence of baby markets with great skepticism, but reluctant acceptance. Drawing on a relational conception of autonomy and self-definition, she argues that commodification of reproductive material is intrinsically harmful. Moreover, such commodification poses a number of consequential harms. Nevertheless, in spite of these concerns, the author "gives in" to baby markets, which is to say …
States, Markets, And Gatekeepers: Public-Private Regulatory Regimes In An Era Of Economic Globalization, Christopher M. Bruner
States, Markets, And Gatekeepers: Public-Private Regulatory Regimes In An Era Of Economic Globalization, Christopher M. Bruner
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article illuminates the spectrum of international economic regimes through discussion of an under-theorized regulatory structure in which traditional distinctions between State and market, public and private power, hard and soft law, and international and domestic policy realms, essentially collapse-the "public-private gatekeeper."
Better, Faster, Cheaper - Later: What Happens When Technologies Are Suppressed, Kurt M. Saunders, Linda Levine
Better, Faster, Cheaper - Later: What Happens When Technologies Are Suppressed, Kurt M. Saunders, Linda Levine
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
Some inventions never see the light of day. Others enter the spotlight after long delays and the factors that slowed the arrival of that innovation are ignored. Technology suppression is a real occurrence involving well known and widely used products. In this Article, we examine the topic of technology suppression, seeking to reveal the tactics of suppression and the patterns and conditions under which it occurs. Current examples of US technologies are used to highlight the significance of this phenomenon. We consider related factors, including market and innovation forces, and we identify suppressive tactics, using illustrative cases where patent nonuse …
Government Preferences For Promoting Open-Source Software: A Solution In Search Of A Problem, David S. Evans, Bernard J. Reddy
Government Preferences For Promoting Open-Source Software: A Solution In Search Of A Problem, David S. Evans, Bernard J. Reddy
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
Governments around the world are making or considering efforts to promote open-source software (typically produced by cooperatives of individuals) at the expense of proprietary software (generally sold by for-profit software developers). This article examines the economic basis for these kinds of government interventions in the market. It first provides some background on the software industry. The article discusses the industrial organization and performance of the proprietary software business and describes how the open-source movement produces and distributes software. It then surveys current government proposals and initiatives to support open-source software and examines whether there is a significant market failure that …
Antitrust Enfocement And High-Technology Markets, William J. Baer, David A. Balto
Antitrust Enfocement And High-Technology Markets, William J. Baer, David A. Balto
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
Although the antitrust laws apply to all industries, the application must be tempered in each case by the myriad ways in which competition can be modified by structural, behavioral, technological, regulatory, and other characteristics. The Commission applies the antitrust laws with sensitivity to the special characteristics of high-tech industries and of intellectual property, but also with the recognition that--as in other industries--competition plays an important role in spurring innovation and in spreading the benefits of that innovation to consumers. This focus is not new. This balanced approach has roots that go back at least to the 1977 Antitrust Guide to …
From Coitus To Commerce: Legal And Social Consequences Of Noncoital Reproduction, Joan Heifetz Hollinger
From Coitus To Commerce: Legal And Social Consequences Of Noncoital Reproduction, Joan Heifetz Hollinger
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This paper argues that there is an urgent need for the creation and clarification of a legal framework within which contemporary efforts to produce or procure children can take place. State legislatures should act now in order to avoid the kind of crisis that confronts Great Britain, where an infant girl, the product of a breached surrogacy contract, has been impounded by a British court. While the court ponders how to determine the legal parentage of this particular child, Parliament considers criminal penalties for those who arrange surrogacy contracts and general regulations to constrain IVF and ET research and practice. …
The Un-Easy Case For Technological Optimism, James E. Krier, Clayton P. Gillette
The Un-Easy Case For Technological Optimism, James E. Krier, Clayton P. Gillette
Articles
"Technological optimism" is a term of art, an article of faith, and a theory of politics. It is a view that pervades modem attitudes, yet gets little explicit attention. For a brief period the situation was otherwise. In the early 1970s, the optimistic outlook figured prominently in an important debate about nothing less than the future of the world. Technological optimism won. The outcome was unsurprising, given the nature of the argument. On one side of the debate was a group of self-proclaimed Malthusians who foresaw an impending period of stark scarcity unless relatively drastic remedial steps were quickly taken; …
The Political Economy Of Orbit Spectrum Leasing, Harvey Levin
The Political Economy Of Orbit Spectrum Leasing, Harvey Levin
Michigan Journal of International Law
This article will propose several plans for allocating a common resource of the earth-the international orbit spectrum--among nations through mechanisms designed to introduce market incentives. The rights to orbital "parking places" are so defined as to permit their subdivision, recombination, and assignment in lease markets. The lease market approach accommodates the interests of both developed countries (DCs), who have the technology and domestic demand to establish satellite systems today, and less-developed countries (LDCs), who seek long-range planning to guarantee them access to the orbit spectrum at a time in the future when they, too, possess the capability and need. In …
Technology Diffusion And The Performance Of American Manufacturing: A Propsal For An Industrial Extension Service, Frank Ostroff
Technology Diffusion And The Performance Of American Manufacturing: A Propsal For An Industrial Extension Service, Frank Ostroff
Michigan Journal of International Law
The purpose of this article is to propose an Industrial Extension Service modeled upon the Agricultural Extension Service, and suggest how it might effectively address certain fundamental problems hindering the performance of the American manufacturing sector. Part I highlights some probable causes of American manufacturing's declining relative performance. Part II discusses why firms may adopt new technology more slowly than would be optimal. Part III considers the model of the Agricultural Extension Service, pointing out those features that make it attractive and those features that would have to be changed in applying it to the industrial sector. Part III also …
An Alternative To High Tech, Donald E. Dekieffer
An Alternative To High Tech, Donald E. Dekieffer
Michigan Journal of International Law
In recent years American industry's ability to compete in the international marketplace has appeared to decline. With a decreased world market share and a balance of payments deficit many policymakers have concluded that traditional industry is dying and that it is time to reassess American economic strength in new and more advanced industries, that is, "high-tech" industries. The "failure" of domestic "smokestack" industries producing automobiles, steel, and textiles allegedly supports this view. However, the problems of these industries are attributable to the current structure and climate of international and domestic trade. To offer any realistic solutions, the following issues must …
The Engineers In The Price System, Alfred A. Desimone Jr.
The Engineers In The Price System, Alfred A. Desimone Jr.
Michigan Law Review
A Review of America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism by David F. Noble