Fiona Scott Morton

Fiona M. Scott Morton is the Theodore Nierenberg Professor of Economics at the Yale University School of Management. Her area of academic research is empirical industrial organization, with a focus on empirical studies of competition. Her published articles range widely across industries, from magazines, to shipping, to pharmaceuticals, to internet retailing, and are published in leading economics journals. From 2011-12 Professor Scott Morton served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economics at the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where she helped enforce the nation’s antitrust laws. At Yale SOM she teaches courses in the area of competitive strategy. She served as Associate Dean from 2007-10 and has won the School’s teaching award twice.

What We Learn About the Behavioral Economics of Defaults From the Google Search Monopolization Case

At the heart of the United States Google Search case is the monopolizing effect of Google securing for its own search offering the status of default search engine on a web browser, such as Safari, Chrome, or Firefox. The authors review the behavioral economics and empirical evidence of this effect and suggest several conduct and structural remedies to open up the search market to competition.

The New and Improved 2023 Merger Guidelines

The final version of the Agencies’ Merger Guidelines are a thoughtful improvement over the draft version, writes Fiona Scott Morton. Both the economic and legal analysis in the final version promise to more effectively prevent harmful mergers and bring U.S. antitrust into the modern age.

What Antitrust Experts Want You to Know About the Amazon Trial

In late September, the United States Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon for using a set of anticompetitive strategies to maintain its monopoly in the online retail market. ProMarket asked four antitrust experts —two economists and two law professors —to discuss the foundations and strength of the complaint’s arguments, the history of similar cases, and the potential for a legal remedy.

Split the Legal, Economic and Policy Arguments of the Draft Merger Guidelines

To support the Agencies’ goals of stronger antitrust enforcement, Fiona Scott Morton recommends breaking the draft Merger Guidelines into three documents that clarify the Guidelines’ legal and economic justifications and overarching goals and priorities.

The Life of Antitrust’s Consumer Welfare Model

“Consumer welfare” as an objective of antitrust law and regulation has its origins in several vague and even conflicting ideas of how to evaluate...

Fighting New Antitrust Rules Is a Bad Move for Big Tech

With new limits on platforms taking effect in the EU and U.S. politicians showing greater willingness to defy tech titans, companies would do better...

Why Congress Should Pass the American Innovation and Choice Online Act

The bill, which is the Senate is expected to vote on soon, would improve competition, increase innovation, benefit consumers, and provide the US with...

How Europe Can Enforce the Digital Markets Act Effectively 

As the European Commission gets ready to embark on the complicated task of implementing the recently agreed-upon Digital Market Act, which would regulate Big...

What Economists Mean When They Say “Consumer Welfare Standard”

Though coined by academic economists, the term “consumer welfare standard” has been captured and changed by the economic school of thought known as the...

The Real Dish on the T-Mobile/Sprint Merger: A Disastrous Deal From the Start

The Trump-era DOJ’s decision to allow the T-Mobile/Sprint merger will go down as one of the worst merger-enforcement mistakes in decades. This merger will...

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