Law Commons^™

Regulating New Tech: Problems, Pathways, And People, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

New technologies bring with them many promises, but also a series of new problems. Even though these problems are new, they are not unlike the types of problems that regulators have long addressed in other contexts. The lessons from regulation in the past can thus guide regulatory efforts today. Regulators must focus on understanding the problems they seek to address and the causal pathways that lead to these problems. Then they must undertake efforts to shape the behavior of those in industry so that private sector managers focus on their technologies’ problems and take actions to interrupt the causal pathways. …

Antitrust And Platform Monopoly, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

Are large digital platforms that deal directly with consumers “winner take all,” or natural monopoly, firms? That question is surprisingly complex and does not produce the same answer for every platform. The closer one looks at digital platforms the less they seem to be winner-take-all. As a result, competition can be made to work in most of them. Further, antitrust enforcement, with its accommodation of firm variety, is generally superior to any form of statutory regulation that generalizes over large numbers.

Assuming that an antitrust violation is found, what should be the remedy? Breaking up large firms subject to extensive …

Law School News: 'You Have To Adapt To Survive' 11-11-2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Voting Trusts And Antitrust: Rethinking The Role Of Shareholder Litigation In Public Regulation, From The 1880s To The 1930s, Laura Phillips Sawyer, Naomi R. Lamoreaux

Scholarly Works

In 1903 the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) bought a majority interest in the Kellogg Switchboard and Supply Company, allegedly with the aim of eliminating competition in the telephone business. Perhaps it is not remarkable that the Illinois Supreme Court ruled this acquisition of an Illinois corporation to be illegal. What is noteworthy, however, is that the court took this step at the behest of a group of Kellogg’s minority shareholders who had filed suit to block the deal. Judges had long responded skeptically to such actions, worried that shareholders would clog the courts with challenges to managers’ decisions …

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

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

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 …

The Irony Of Health Care’S Public Option, Allison K. Hoffman

All Faculty Scholarship

The idea of a public health insurance option is at least a half century old, but has not yet had its day in the limelight. This chapter explains why if that moment ever comes, health care’s public option will fall short of expectations that it will provide a differentiated, meaningful alternative to private health insurance and will spur health insurance competition.

Health care’s public option bubbled up in its best-known form in California in the early 2000s and got increasing mainstream attention in the lead up to the 2010 health reform, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). The …

Christianity And Antitrust, Kenneth G. Elzinga, Daniel Crane

Book Chapters

The purpose of this chapter is to consider whether the Christian faith has a nexus with the institution of antitrust. It turns out it doesn’t – and it does. For example, Christianity cannot explain why the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index is superior to the four-firm concentration ratio as a measure of industry concentration. Economics can. On the other hand, economics cannot explain why the per se rule against price-fixing is morally appropriate. The Bible can.