Regulators in Washington should immediately launch an investigation into Amazon’s e-commerce business.
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Regulators Should Not Change the Regulatory Environment to Include Labor Market Concentration
Research has shown that labor markets with higher levels of labor market concentration have lower wages. It does not necessarily follow that regulators should limit merger activity because of labor market concentration.
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The “Biggest Puzzle in Economics”: Why the “Superstar Economy” Lacks Any Actual Superstars
A new study finds that the contribution of superstar firms to US productivity growth has decreased by more than 40 percent over the past 20 years.
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When the Interests of Monopolists and Authoritarians Coalesce
It is when the behemoth of monopoly enterprise consorts with the leviathan of the authoritarian state that both are likely to achieve permanence, writes Raghuram Rajan.
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The Anticompetitive Effects of Low Interest Rates
A new study argues that declining interest rates are in fact the cause of the recent decline in competition.
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Is Amazon Violating the Sherman Act?
A new paper suggests that Amazon’s negative cash flow rapid expansion story may in fact conceal a long-term predatory pricing strategy that violates existing antitrust laws.
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Social Media Clickwraps and the “Manufacture of Consent”
A new study identifies a political economic interface design strategy that threatens privacy protections by maintaining “the biggest lie on the internet.”
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Rents and Inclusive Growth: A Decline in Rent Sharing Implies Growing Income Inequalities
A new study looks at the long-run evolution of rent sharing between companies and workers in the UK and finds that rent sharing has significantly decreased between 2001 and 2016, particularly among companies that enjoy monopolistic markups.
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Facebook Is a Threat to Democracy — and the US Has a Responsibility to Rein It In
Facebook and Google have failed at self-regulation. If we want to avoid an authoritarian future, we need to reduce the influence of internet platforms, writes early Facebook investor Roger McNamee, author of the new book Zucked.
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How Market Power Worsens Income Inequality
Inequality in stock ownership has grown considerably over the past two decades and is far more pronounced than inequality in consumption or income. A new study charts how this is exacerbated by excess market power.
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The Elephant in the Market Power Debate
Profits are the ultimate sign of market power. But for the past 40 years, economists and antitrust practitioners have disparaged the measurement of profit margins as unreliable. That needs to change, and new scholarship showing rising margins across the economy is leading the way.
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Paging Don Qixote: The Last Hope for American Merger Law
Of the eight or nine hundred antitrust claims each year, few are private merger claims, and almost all of them fail. That is why the case of Steves & Sons, a rare private merger challenge decided by a federal court in Virginia last year, holds larger significance for the future of US antitrust enforcement.
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