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Full-Text Articles in Law
Dynamic Pricing Algorithms, Consumer Harm, And Regulatory Response, Alexander Mackay, Samuel Weinstein
Dynamic Pricing Algorithms, Consumer Harm, And Regulatory Response, Alexander Mackay, Samuel Weinstein
Articles
Pricing algorithms are rapidly transforming markets, from ride-sharing, to air travel, to online retail. Regulators and scholars have watched this development with a wary eye. Their focus so far has been on the potential for pricing algorithms to facilitate explicit and tacit collusion. This Article argues that the policy challenges pricing algorithms pose are far broader than collusive conduct. It demonstrates that algorithmic pricing can lead to higher prices for consumers in competitive markets and even in the absence of collusion. This consumer harm can be initiated by a single firm employing a superior pricing algorithm. Higher prices arise from …
Addictive Technology And Its Implications For Antitrust Enforcement, James Niels Rosenquist, Fiona M. Scott Morton, Samuel N. Weinstein
Addictive Technology And Its Implications For Antitrust Enforcement, James Niels Rosenquist, Fiona M. Scott Morton, Samuel N. Weinstein
Articles
The advent of mobile devices and digital media platforms in the past decade represents the biggest shock to cognition in human history. Robust medical evidence is emerging that digital media platforms are addictive and, when used in excess, harmful to users’ mental health. Other types of addictive products, like tobacco and prescription drugs, are heavily regulated to protect consumers. Currently, there is no regulatory structure protecting digital media users from these harms. Antitrust enforcement and regulation that lowers entry barriers could help consumers of social media by increasing competition. Economic theory tells us that more choice in digital media will …
Why Intra-Brand Dealer Competition Is Irrelevant To The Price Effects Of Tesla's Vertical Integration, Daniel A. Crane
Why Intra-Brand Dealer Competition Is Irrelevant To The Price Effects Of Tesla's Vertical Integration, Daniel A. Crane
Articles
"In recent years, Tesla Motors (recently renamed Tesla) has been engaged in a state-by-state ground way for the right to distribute it’s all-electric vehicles directly to consumers. The car dealers' lobby, with the political backing of General Motors, has fiercely battled back, relying on decades-old state dealer protection laws to argue that Tesla is legally bound to distribute through franchised dealers. Through a combination of favorable state legislative and judicial decisions, Tesla has won the right to distribute directly in many states, but remains categorically barred from direct distribution in important states like Michigan and Texas--and hence all direct distribution …
Tesla And The Car Dealers' Lobby, Daniel A. Crane
Tesla And The Car Dealers' Lobby, Daniel A. Crane
Articles
Tesla Motors, the offspring of entrepreneur Elon Musk (who brought us Pay-Pal and SpaceX), is the most exciting automotive development in many decades and a marquee story of American technological dynamism and innovation. The company’s luxury electric cars have caused a sensation in the auto industry, including a review by Consumer Reports calling Tesla’s Model S the best car it ever tested. Despite the acclaim, Tesla faces enormous challenges Despite the acclaim, Tesla faces enormous challenges in penetrating an automotive market that has been dominated for a century by internal combustion engines. Not only must it build cars that customers …
Tying And Consumer Harm, Daniel A. Crane
Tying And Consumer Harm, Daniel A. Crane
Articles
Brantley raises important issues of law, economics, and policy about tying arrangements. Under current legal principles, Brantley was on solid ground in distinguishing between anticompetitive ties and those that might harm consumer interests without impairing competition. As a matter of economics, the court was also right to reject the claim that the cable programmers forced consumers to pay for programs the customers didn’t want. The hardest question is a policy one - whether antitrust law should ever condemn the exploitation of market power in ways that extract surplus from consumers but do not create or enlarge market power. I shall …
Can Bundled Discounting Increase Consumer Prices Without Excluding Rivals?, Daniel A. Crane, Joshua D. Wright
Can Bundled Discounting Increase Consumer Prices Without Excluding Rivals?, Daniel A. Crane, Joshua D. Wright
Articles
Since we abhor suspense, we will quickly answer the question our title poses: No. As a general matter, bundled discounting schemes lower prices to consumers unless they are predatory—that is to say, unless they exclude rivals and thereby permit the bundled discounter to price free of competitive restraint. The corollary of this observation is that bundled discounting is generally pro-competitive and pro-consumer and should only be condemned when it is capable of excluding rivals. We pose and answer this question because it is at the heart of Section VI of Professor Elhauge’s provocative draft article which is the subject of …
Price Discrimination Law And Economic Efficiency, Edward H. Cooper
Price Discrimination Law And Economic Efficiency, Edward H. Cooper
Articles
The Clayton Act, as amended by the Robinson-Patman Act (15 U.S.C. § 13), undertakes to outlaw price "discrimination" upon proof of threatened injury to competition, and subject to specified defenses. Lawyers often bewail the fact that administration of this statute frequently fails to conform to an economist's notion of discrimination. For the most part, the complaints are addressed to the clear fact that, as drafted and interpreted, the statute wreaks unnecessary damage. In the name of protecting competition, competition and economic efficiency are often curtailed.