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Full-Text Articles in Law
Broadening Consumer Law: Competition, Protection, And Distribution, Rory Van Loo
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
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.
The Separation Of Platforms And Commerce, Lina M. Khan
The Separation Of Platforms And Commerce, Lina M. Khan
Faculty Scholarship
A handful of digital platforms mediate a growing share of online commerce and communications. By structuring access to markets, these firms function as gatekeepers for billions of dollars in economic activity. One feature dominant digital platforms share is that they have integrated across business lines such that they both operate a platform and market their own goods and services on it. This structure places dominant platforms in direct competition with some of the businesses that depend on them, creating a conflict of interest that platforms can exploit to further entrench their dominance, thwart competition, and stifle innovation.
This Article argues …
The Global Dominance Of European Competition Law Over American Antitrust Law, Anu Bradford, Adam S. Chilton, Katerina Linos, Alex Weaver
The Global Dominance Of European Competition Law Over American Antitrust Law, Anu Bradford, Adam S. Chilton, Katerina Linos, Alex Weaver
Faculty Scholarship
The world’s biggest consumer markets – the European Union and the United States – have adopted different approaches to regulating competition. This has not only put the EU and US at odds in high-profile investigations of anticompetitive conduct, but also made them race to spread their regulatory models. Using a novel dataset of competition statutes, we investigate this race to influence the world’s regulatory landscape and find that the EU’s competition laws have been more widely emulated than the US’s competition laws. We then argue that both “push” and “pull” factors explain the appeal of the EU’s competition regime: the …
Trade Openness And Antitrust Law, Anu Bradford, Adam S. Chilton
Trade Openness And Antitrust Law, Anu Bradford, Adam S. Chilton
Faculty Scholarship
Openness to international trade and adoption of antitrust laws can both curb anti-competitive behavior. But scholars have long debated the relationship between the two. Some argue that greater trade openness makes antitrust unnecessary, while others contend that antitrust laws are still needed to realize the benefits of trade liberalization. Data limitations have made this debate largely theoretical to date. We study the relationship between trade and antitrust empirically using new data on antitrust laws and enforcement activities. We find that trade openness and stringency of antitrust laws are positively correlated from 1950 to 2010 overall, but the positive correlation disappears …
Price Discrimination & Intellectual Property, Michael J. Meurer, Ben Depoorter
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. …