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Series

Antitrust and Trade Regulation

American University Washington College of Law

Competition

Articles 1 - 8 of 8

Full-Text Articles in Law

Protecting And Fostering Online Platform Competition: The Role Of Antitrust Law, Jonathan Baker Jun 2021

Protecting And Fostering Online Platform Competition: The Role Of Antitrust Law, Jonathan Baker

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This essay provides a perspective on the role of antitrust law in protecting and fostering competition in the digital economy, with particular attention to online platforms. It highlights the danger of anticompetitive exclusionary conduct by dominant online platforms and describes ways that antitrust law can challenge and deter such conduct. The essay also identifies a number of difficulties that U.S. courts and enforcers face in challenging harmful exclusionary conduct by dominant platforms, and discusses some ways that regulation can supplement antitrust law in fostering competition.


Navigating The Transition To A More Innovation-Centric Antitrust (Review Of Richard J. Gilbert, Innovation Matters), Jonathan Baker Feb 2021

Navigating The Transition To A More Innovation-Centric Antitrust (Review Of Richard J. Gilbert, Innovation Matters), Jonathan Baker

Book Reviews

Review of Richard J. Gilbert Innovation Matters: Competition Policy for the High-Technology Economy MIT Press 2020


Oligopoly Coordination, Economic Analysis, And The Prophylactic Role Of Horizontal Merger Enforcement, Jonathan Baker Jan 2021

Oligopoly Coordination, Economic Analysis, And The Prophylactic Role Of Horizontal Merger Enforcement, Jonathan Baker

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

For decades, the major United States airlines have raised passenger fares through coordinated fare-setting when their route networks overlap, according to the United States Department of Justice. Through its review of company documents and testimony, the Justice Department found that when major airlines have overlapping route networks, they respond to rivals’ price changes across multiple routes and thereby discourage competition from their rivals. A recent empirical study reached a similar conclusion: It found that fares have increased for this reason on more than 1000 routes nationwide and even that American and Delta, two airlines with substantial route overlaps, have come …


Five Principles For Vertical Merger Enforcement Policy, Jonathan Baker, Nancy Rose, Steven Salop, Fiona Scott Morton Mar 2019

Five Principles For Vertical Merger Enforcement Policy, Jonathan Baker, Nancy Rose, Steven Salop, Fiona Scott Morton

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

There seems to be consensus that the Department of Justice’s 1984 Vertical Merger Guidelines do not reflect either modern theoretical and empirical economic analysis or current agency enforcement policy. Yet widely divergent views of preferred enforcement policies have been expressed among agency enforcers and commentators. Based on our review of the relevant economic literature and our experience analyzing vertical mergers, we recommend that the enforcement agencies adopt five principles: (i) The agencies should consider and investigate the full range of potential anticompetitive harms when evaluating vertical mergers; (ii) The agencies should decline to presume that vertical mergers benefit competition on …


Five Principles For Vertical Merger Enforcement Policy, Jonathan Baker, Steven Salop, Fiona M. Scott Morton, Nancy Rose Jan 2019

Five Principles For Vertical Merger Enforcement Policy, Jonathan Baker, Steven Salop, Fiona M. Scott Morton, Nancy Rose

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

There seems to be consensus that the Department of Justice’s 1984 Vertical Merger Guidelines do not reflect either modern theoretical and empirical economic analysis or current agency enforcement policy. Yet widely divergent views of preferred enforcement policies have been expressed among agency enforcers and commentators. Based on our review of the relevant economic literature and our experience analyzing vertical mergers, we recommend that the enforcement agencies adopt five principles: (i) The agencies should consider and investigate the full range of potential anticompetitive harms when evaluating vertical mergers; (ii) The agencies should decline to presume that vertical mergers benefit competition on …


Welcome And Introductory Remarks, Jonathan Baker Nov 2018

Welcome And Introductory Remarks, Jonathan Baker

Presentations

Video link: https://vimeo.com/352303633Audio link: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/audio-video/audio/economics-big-data-privacy-competition-introductionThe Federal Trade Commission held the sixth session in its Hearings initiative, with two and a half days of sessions on November 6 – 8, 2018, at American University Washington College of Law, in Washington, D.C.The hearings examined the role that data play in competition and innovation and will also consider the antitrust analysis of mergers and firm conduct where data is a key asset or product.The Commission invited public comment on these issues, including the questions listed below. Comments were due January 7, 2019. If any entity has provided funding for research, analysis, or commentary …


Has The Us Economy Become More Concentrated And Less Competitive: A Review Of The Data, Jonathan Baker, Steven Berry, Fiona Scott Morton, Joshua Wright, Gregory Werden Sep 2018

Has The Us Economy Become More Concentrated And Less Competitive: A Review Of The Data, Jonathan Baker, Steven Berry, Fiona Scott Morton, Joshua Wright, Gregory Werden

Congressional and Other Testimony

FTC Chairman Joe Simons presented opening remarks, followed by a day of discussion by a distinguished set of panelists who discussed the following topics (some of which will be discussed on the rescheduled date):the current landscape of competition and consumer protection law and policy;whether the U.S. economy has become more concentrated and less competitive;the regulation of consumer data;antitrust law and the consumer welfare standard; andthe analysis of vertical mergers.This hearing was initially scheduled for September 13-14, 2018, but the second day sessions were rescheduled to November 1 due to inclement weather.


Market Power In The U.S. Economy Today, Jonathan Baker Mar 2017

Market Power In The U.S. Economy Today, Jonathan Baker

Presentations

Market concentration measures the extent to which market shares are concentrated between a small number of firms. It is often taken as a proxy for the intensity of competition. Indeed, in recent years changes in concentration have increasingly been used to argue that the intensity of competition is falling, that the growth of large firms with high market shares is driving up profits, damaging innovation and productivity, and increasing inequality. Some have argued that the competition rules need to be rewritten and a crackdown by overly antitrust agencies is required. The simplicity of this framing has found supporters across the …