Law Commons^™

On The Misuse Of Regressions Of Price On The Hhi In Merger Review, Jonathan Baker

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The article explains why regressions of price on HHI should not be used in merger review. Both price and HHI are equilibrium outcomes determined by demand, supply, and the factors that drive them. Thus, a regression of price on the HHI does not recover a causal effect that could inform the likely competitive effects of a merger. Nonetheless, economic theory is consistent with the legal presumption that a merger is likely to have adverse competitive effects if it occurs in a concentrated market and makes that market more concentrated.

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

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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.

Hacking Antitrust: Competition Policy And The Computer Fraud And Abuse Act, Charles Duan

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The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a federal computer trespass statute that prohibits accessing a computer "without authorization or exceeding authorized access," has often been criticized for clashing with online norms, over-criminalizing common behavior, and infringing freedom-of-expression interests. These controversies over the CFAA have raised difficult questions about how the statute is to be interpreted, with courts of appeals split on the proper construction and the Supreme Courtset to consider the law in its current October Term 2020.

This article considers the CFAA in a new light, namely its effects on competition. Rather than merely preventing injurious trespass upon computers, …

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

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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

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 …

Accommodating Competition: Harmonizing National Economic Commitments, Jonathan Baker

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This article shows how the norm supporting governmental action to protect and foster competitive markets was harmonized with economic rights to contract and property during the 19th century, and with the development of the social safety net during the 20th century. It explains why the Constitution, as understood today, does not check the erosion of the entrenched but threatened national commitment to assuring competitive markets.

Unlocking Antitrust Enforcement, Jonathan Baker

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No abstract provided.

Antitrust Enforcement Against Platform Mfns, Jonathan Baker, Fiona M. Scott Morton

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Antitrust enforcement against anticompetitive platform most favored nations (MFN) provisions (also termed pricing parity provisions) can help protect competition in online markets. An online platform imposes a platform MFN when it requires that providers using its platform not offer their products or services at a lower price on other platforms. These contractual provisions may be employed by online platforms offering hotel and transportation bookings, consumer goods, digital goods, and handmade craft products. They have been the subject of antitrust enforcement in Europe but have drawn only limited antitrust scrutiny in the U.S. Our paper explains why MFNs employed by online …

Evaluating Appropriability Defenses For The Exclusionary Conduct Of Dominant Firms In Innovative Industries, Jonathan Baker

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In response to antitrust cases challenging the exclusionary conduct of dominant firms, some dominant firms offer an “appropriability defense.” This defense is the claim that prohibiting the challenged conduct would lessen the dominant firm’s return to investment in research and development (R&D), undermine that firm’s incentive to innovate, and harm the prospects for industry innovation. An appropriability defense should be questioned, and often rejected, if the dominant firm would be expected to increase its own R&D effort in response to increased R&D by its rivals after liability on a dominant firm is imposed. An analytical framework for determining whether a …

Overlapping Financial Investor Ownership, Market Power, And Antitrust Enforcement: My Qualified Agreement With Professor Elhauge, Jonathan Baker

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As is well known among financial economists but not previously recognized within the antitrust community, large and diversified institutional investors such as BlackRock, Fidelity, State Street, and Vanguard collectively own roughly two-thirds of the shares of publicly traded U.S. firms overall, up from about one-third in 1980. Recent economic research involving airlines and banking raises the possibility that overlapping ownership of horizontal rivals by diversified financial institutions facilitates anticompetitive conduct throughout the economy, and that the problem has been growing for decades, unnoticed until now. This response to an article by Professor Einer Elhauge, explains why it may be more …

Exclusionary Conduct Of Dominant Firms, R&D Competition, And Innovation, Jonathan Baker

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This paper evaluates the innovation consequences of antitrust enforcement against the exclusionary conduct of dominant firms through a Nash equilibrium model of research and development (R&D) competition to create new products. In the two-firm model, whether one firm regards the other firm’s R&D investment as a strategic complement or strategic substitute turns on an increasing differences condition: whether the first firm’s incremental benefit of increased R&D investment is greater if its rival’s R&D effort succeeds or if its rival’s R&D effort fails. Antitrust prohibitions on pre-innovation exclusion and post-innovation exclusion are found to be effective in different strategic settings: preventing …

Antitrust, Competition Policy, An Inequality, Jonathan Baker, Steven Salop

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Economic inequality recently has entered the political discourse in a highly visible way. This political impact is not a surprise. As the U.S. economy has begun to recover from the Great Recession since mid-2009, economic growth has effectively been appropriated by those already well off, leaving the median household less well off. The serious economic, political and moral issues raised by inequality can be addressed through a panoply of public policies including competition policy, the focus of this article. The article describes the channels through which market power contributes to inequality, and sets forth a range of possible antitrust policy …

Taking The Error Out Of 'Error Cost' Analysis: What's Wrong With Antitrust's Right, Jonathan Baker

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This article catalogues a series of erroneous assumptions about the current competition policy environment made by today’s antitrust conservatives. These errors inappropriately tilt the application of a neutral economic tool, decision theory, toward non-interventionist outcomes.

Channeling And Contending With Bill Kovacic, Jonathan B. Baker

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No abstract provided.

Patent Dialogue, Jonas Anderson

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This Article examines the unique dialogic relationship that exists between the Supreme Court and Congress concerning patent law. In most areas of the law, Congress and the Supreme Court engage directly with each other to craft legal rules. When it comes to patent law, however, Congress and the Court often interact via an intermediary institution: the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In patent law, dialogue often begins when Congress or the Supreme Court acts as a dialogic catalyst, signaling reform priorities to which the Federal Circuit often responds.

Appreciating the unique nature of patent dialogue has important …

Exclusion As A Core Competition Concern, Jonathan Baker

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A contemporary consensus in antitrust discourse inappropriately places exclusionary conduct at the periphery of competition policy, while putting collusion at the core. Contrary to that common view, exclusion is as important as collusion as a matter of precedent, the structure of doctrinal rules, economics, and sound competition policy. Courts treat exclusionary violations as serious competitive problems. An emerging doctrinal rule for truncated condemnation of “plain” exclusionary conduct (practices foreclosing rivals that lack a plausible efficiency justification) parallels the evolving judicial approach toward “naked” collusion. Exclusion and collusion can be understood within a common economic framework that emphasizes the close relationship …

The Competitive Consequences Of Most-Favored-Nation Provisions, Jonathan Baker, Judith A. Chevalier

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"Most Favored Nation" contractual provisions have come under scrutiny in recent years by antitrust authorities in both the US and EU. MFNs are a type of vertical agreement between suppliers and buyers. The literature has recognized that there may be efficiency rationales for these arrangements but the literature has also recognized that these arrangements have anticompetitive potential. In this paper, we distill the economics literature on MFNs to explore both possibilities.

Economics And Politics: Perspectives On The Goals And Future Of Antitrust, Jonathan Baker

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This article examines the roles of economics and politics in U.S. antitrust from several perspectives. It explains why the modern debate over the economic welfare standard that enforcers and courts should pursue is unsatisfying. It connects economics and politics by describing antitrust’s economic goals as the product of a mid-20th century political understanding about the nature of economic regulation that has continued in force to this day. To protect that understanding, it explains, antitrust rules should now be implemented using a qualified consumer welfare standard. The article also identifies contemporary political tensions that threaten to create regulatory gridlock, or even …

The Perils Of Armchair Analysis: Evaluating Merger Enforcement During The Obama Administration, Jonathan Baker, Carl Shapiro

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This brief comment responds to the analysis of Obama administration merger policy in Daniel A. Crane, Has the Obama Justice Department Reinvigorated Antitrust Enforcement? 65 STAN. L. REV. ONLINE 13 (2012).

Sector-Specific Competition Enforcement At The Fcc, Jonathan Baker

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This comment explains how and why sector-specific enforcement by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) complements generalist competition enforcement by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), to the benefit of competition in the communications industry. It illustrates ways in which a sector-specific agency such as the FCC can foster competition by comparing merger reviews by the FCC and DOJ in the wake of the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

Comcast/Nbcu: The Fcc Provides A Roadmap For Vertical Merger Analysis, Jonathan Baker

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The FCC’s analysis of the Comcast-NBCU transaction fills a gap in the contemporary treatment of vertical mergers by providing a roadmap for courts and litigants addressing the possibility of anticompetitive exclusion. The FCC identified the factors any judicial or administrative tribunal would likely consider today in analyzing whether a vertical merger would lead to anticompetitive input or customer foreclosure, and a range of economic methods potentially relevant to applying that template to the facts of a transaction. Notwithstanding the difference between administrative adjudication under a public interest standard and judicial decision-making under the Clayton Act, the legal framework and economic …

Preserving A Political Bargain: The Political Economy Of The Non-Interventionist Challenge To Monopolization Enforcement, Jonathan Baker

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The antitrust rules governing exclusionary conduct by dominant firms are among the most controversial in U.S. competition policy. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, they were debated in three arenas, involving legal policy, economic policy, and politics. In each arena, the dispute mainly arose as criticism of traditional standards by advocates of less intervention. Viewed through a political economy lens, the controversy can be understood as a potential challenge to an informal political bargain reached during the 1940s by which competition was adopted as national economic policy in preference to regulation or laissez-faire. From this perspective, and applying …

International Disparities Panel, Sean Flynn

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No abstract provided.

'Dynamic Competition' Does Not Excuse Monopolization, Jonathan Baker

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This comment on a forthcoming article by Keith Hylton and David Evans explains why considerations of "dynamic competition" do not argue against antitrust enforcement. While the prospect of achieving monopoly may foster innovation, that observation misleads as to appropriate antitrust policy unless qualified by the observation that the push of competition generally spurs innovation more than the pull of monopoly. Moreover, the longstanding doctrinal rule that mere monopoly pricing is not illegal should not be read as demonstrating that antitrust law values monopolies for their role in promoting innovation.

Merger To Monopoly To Serve A Single Buyer: Comment, Jonathan Baker

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No abstract provided.

Beyond Schumpeter Vs. Arrow: How Antitrust Fosters Innovation, Jonathan Baker

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The relationship between competition and innovation is the subject of a familiar controversy in economics, between the Schumpeterian view that monopolies favor innovation and the opposite view, often associated with Kenneth Arrow, that competition favors innovation. Taking their cue from this debate, some commentators reserve judgment as to whether antitrust enforcement is good for innovation. Such misgivings are unnecessary. The modern economic learning about the connection between competition and innovation helps clarify the types of firm conduct and industry settings where antitrust interventions are most likely to foster innovation. Measured against this standard, contemporary competition policy holds up well. Today's …

Market Definition: An Analytical Overview, Jonathan Baker

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This essay surveys important issues in antitrust market definition. It identifies settings in which market definition is useful, and evaluates methods of defining markets. It considers whether markets should be defined with respect to demand substitution only or whether supply substitution also should count. It addresses practical issues in defining markets, including the probative value of various types of evidence, how much buyer substitution is too much, application of the market definition algorithm of the Horizontal Merger Guidelines, the Cellophane fallacy, and the advantages and disadvantages of defining submarkets. It also evaluates several controversial approaches to market definition, including price …

Economic Evidence In Antitrust: Defining Markets And Measuring Market Power In Paolo Buccirossi, Jonathan Baker, Timothy Bresnahan

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This paper addresses an important aspect of the interdisciplinary collaboration between law and economics: the use antitrust courts can and should make of empirical industrial organization economics, in light of the expansion of empirical knowledge generated during the last few decades. First we show how courts can apply what economists have learned about identification of alternative theories of industry structure and firm strategy to the problems of defining markets and determining whether market power has been exercised. We emphasize that the same analytic issues arise regardless of whether the evidence on these concepts is quantitative or qualitative. Second we show …

Fielding A Team For The Fans: The Societal Consequences And Title Vii Implications Of Race-Considered Roster Construction In Professional Sport, N. Jeremi Duru

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Professional sports organizations' relationships with their players are, like other employer-employee relationships, subject to scrutiny under the antidiscrimination mandates embedded in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Professional sports organizations are, however, unique among employers in many respects. Most notably, unlike other employers, professional sports organizations attract avid supporters who identify deeply with the teams and their players. To the extent an organization racially discriminates, therefore, such discrimination creates the risk that fans will identify with the homogenous or racially disproportionate roster that results. The consequences of such race-based team identification are wide-reaching and potentially tragic. Through …

Competition Policy As A Political Bartain, Jonathan Baker

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Competition policy in the U.S. may be understood as a self-enforcing political bargain emerging from a repeated political interaction between two large and diffuse interest groups, consumers and producers. Absent such a bargain, regulatory policy would fluctuate between pro-producer policies that tolerate the exercise of market power and pro-consumer policies that systematically redistribute surplus from producers to consumers. This perspective is consistent with the broad contours of the historical U.S. experience with antitrust, particularly with the continuity in antitrust enforcement and decline in the political salience of competition policy since the 1940s. The adoption of Chicago school views during the …