antitrust and competition

Simonetta Vezzoso weighs in on the policy debate on algorithmic competition.

In a recent paper on “The Great Startup Sellout,” Bruno Pellegrino of Columbia University and a Stigler Center affiliate fellow, and Florian Ederer of Boston University, study how the changing life cycle of startups is affecting competition in the US economy. They conclude that the companies acquiring startups have become more and more insulated from competition.

Verizon Communications Inc. v. Trinko departed from the legal principles regulating refusals to deal under Section 2 of the Sherman Act. The 2004 Supreme Court opinion also embedded an ideological preference for non-intervention that has spread to other areas of antitrust law, eroding its ability to deter anticompetitive conduct. On its own terms, however, there are opportunities to distinguish and constrain Trinko, writes Andrew I. Gavil.

Eric Posner provides his thoughts on the draft Merger Guidelines.

Michal Gal discusses the regulatory hurdles to deal with the impacts of algorithmic price collusion. In the meantime, she says, market fixes include algorithmic consumers and platform nudges to mitigate price coordination.

The Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State hosted its annual antitrust and competition conference in late April. The following is a transcript of the Tim Wu's keynote in conversation with Binyamin Appelbaum of The New York Times.

Without saying how, FTC Commissioner Slaughter says competition authorities should do more than just protect competition in pipeline products; they should protect broader competition...

Axel Gautier, Ashwin Ittoo, and Pieter van Cleynenbreugel write that the practice of pricing algorithms tacitly colluding remains theoretical for now, and technological obstacles render it very unlikely in the short term. However, regulators must still prepare for a future in which artificial intelligence achieves the necessary sophistication to collude.

The Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State hosted its annual antitrust and competition conference in late April. The following is a transcript of the Susan Athey's keynote in conversation with Tommaso Valletti.

Oliver Budzinski and Victoriia Noskova discuss in their publication why merger simulations are not more widely used by competition authorities and in front of the courts to predict future effects of mergers despite advancements in availability of data, AI and computational power. The institutional setting is an essential factor for computational antitrust tools to be accepted and applied by competition authorities.