antitrust and competition

Corporate America makes sport of gaming the tax authorities, especially after decades of budget cuts to the IRS. What dominant corporations make by hiring expensive tax and lobby teams to distort the rules in their favor, smaller businesses, workers, and the general public are forced to cover with higher taxes and worsened services. Competition shouldn’t hinge on who has more pull over the tax rules and how they’re enforced. Decisions made over the next year to modernize the IRS present a historic opportunity to shape a less entrenched and more competitive economy, writes Niko Lusiani.

In new research, Mariana Pargendler, Maria Luiza Mesquita, and Lucas Víspico study how antitrust authorities in the Global South have used family ties to define business enterprises and analyze mergers and acquisitions for possibly anticompetitive behavior.

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.

Cristina Caffarra discusses the animating principles and profound changes brought about by the new draft Merger Guidelines, and argues they will resonate with policy makers and enforcers in other jurisdictions.

Zephyr Teachout provides her round-one comments on the draft Merger Guidelines.

The following is a chapter excerpt from The Problem of Twelve: When a Few Financial Institutions Control Everything, written by John Coates and published today by Columbia Global Reports.

Eleanor Fox provides her round-one comments on the draft Merger Guidelines. To read more from the ProMarket Merger Guidelines Symposium, please see here.

The Federal Trade Commission has recently lost a series of cases seeking to prevent Big Tech mergers and acquisitions. Jay Ezrielev offers several possible explanations for why the FTC continues to pursue these bad cases and suggests how the agency can refocus its energies to better serve its mission to protect competition going forward.

Cory S. Capps and Leemore Dafny provide their round-one comments on the draft Merger Guidelines.

Carl Shapiro provides his round-one comments on the draft Merger Guidelines.