Barak Orbach

After several decades of obscurity, antitrust reemerged as a fashionable force in the second and third decades of the 21st century. This trend coincided with growing societal distrust of expertise. Barak Orbach explores assertions that corruption and greed drive support for lax antitrust enforcement policies, and that trustbusting zeal is a marker of intellectual integrity. He argues that intellectual integrity and sound public policy require the moderate, technocratic approaches that society heavily discounts.

The United States power grid is increasingly strained by the surging electricity demand driven by the AI boom. Efforts to modernize the power infrastructure are unlikely to keep pace with the rising demand in the coming years. Barak and Eli Orbach explore why competition in AI markets may create an electricity demand shock, examine the associated social costs, and offer several policy recommendations.

A growing number of companies offer artificial intelligence-powered revenue management platforms, which leverage big data and sensitive business information from multiple firms to optimize pricing, output, and other operational decisions for their clients. Over the past 18 months, dozens of antitrust lawsuits have alleged that such platforms facilitate price-fixing among rivals. Barak Orbach explores the strength of the allegations and the antitrust implications of such revenue management platforms.

Texas Instruments’ TI-84 calculator has been the standard graphing calculator for American students for twenty years, despite its high cost and lack of innovation. Barak and Eli Orbach explore how Texas Instruments created its entrenched calculator monopoly and the lessons it offers educators as they grapple with the emerging possibilities of artificial intelligence in the classroom.

The United States has recently experienced shrinkflation. Many companies have downsized their products while keeping prices unchanged or even raising prices. Barak Orbach argues that misguided beliefs that failed antitrust policies enabled the decay of business morality have compromised the understanding of shrinkflation. The phenomenon typically arises when supply shocks or other factors inflate production costs in the economy and competitive pressures limit the ability of businesses to raise prices to pass on cost increases.

Some progressive politicians and advocates have argued that lax antitrust policies enabled the inflation surge that began in 2021 and that aggressive antitrust enforcement is crucial to combatting inflation. These assertions are misguided and misleading. Similar greedflation theories emerged during previous inflation spikes, but their promotion this time has proven counterproductive. The allure of trustbusting ideas, it seems, is starting to wane.