The Digital Economy

Can OpenAI Abandon Its Non-Profit “Purpose”?

Rose Chan Loui explains the current controversy surrounding OpenAI’s decision to abandon its nonprofit status. To learn more about OpenAI’s proposed restructuring, what it means for the race to develop artificial general intelligence, and how it highlights the tricky legal concept of a nonprofit’s “purpose,” listen to Chan Loui’s recent appearance on Capitalisn’t.

Why Google’s Dominance in Search Persists – And How to Fix It

A new field experiment sheds light on why Google continues to dominate the search engine market despite regulatory interventions and the availability of alternatives. The authors find that while Google offers higher quality, consumer overestimation of this advantage—along with inattention and default effects—helps entrench its market power and limits the effectiveness of proposed antitrust remedies.

The Benefits of Platform Monopoly

Andrey Mir writes that antitrust scholarship and enforcement seeking to break up platform monopolies overlook the benefits that these platforms provide because they are monopolies. He says the community must keep this in mind as it seeks to alleviate harms that any monopoly incurs to the economy.

Trump May Change how the EU Thinks About Antitrust and Free Speech

The new Trump administration has thrust antitrust’s role in protecting free speech into the spotlight. Jan Polański discusses how this development should inform the European Union’s own debates about antitrust and free speech.

Can Antitrust Remedy Big Tech Censorship?

Kaleb Byars argues that while Big Tech censorship may constitute antitrust harm, without reform current law does not provide antitrust agencies or the courts a remedy.

China’s Regulatory Balancing Act

The following is an excerpt from Angela Zhang's recent book, High Wire, out at Oxford University Press. Please join the Stigler Center on April 3 at 6:30-7:30 pm CT for a conversation with Zhang, where she'll discuss High Wire with Financial Times' China Technology Correspondent Eleanor Olcott. You can register for the livestream of the event here.

A TikTok Ban Would Raise Ad Prices on Meta and Harm Small Business

In new research, Dante Donati and Hortense Fong find that the brief TikTok outage in January benefited Meta as advertisers turned to its platforms to reach users. Small businesses, less able to switch, lost out.

Can Middleware Save Social Media From Big Tech?

Big Tech’s monopoly over online discourse threatens democracy. "Middleware" promises a path forward by adding competitive, customizable layers of recommendation algorithms. But can middleware...

Concentration in Social Media Undermines Product Design Quality and User Experience

Alissa Cooper and Zander Arnao argue that a lack of competition in social media has allowed dominant platforms to design algorithms to maximize for...

The TikTok Ban Is a Case Study in American Political Economy 101

Utsav Gandhi relates recent developments in the American government’s ban on TikTok and shows how the case maps over broader debates about conflicts between...

Latest news