antitrust and competition

In two rounds, 12 antitrust experts will provide their comments on the draft Merger Guidelines and respond to each other's comments. On July 19, the...

Since 1993 the American enforcers have claimed that they can directly protect firms’ competition to innovate. And the European Commission, which at first acknowledged that it protected competition in Future Markets, markets for products which do not exist yet, later claimed that it too can directly protect firms’ competition to innovate. In their new Revised Merger Guidelines the American enforcers now not only acknowledge that they protect competition in Future Markets, but say that they will do so aggressively. And since the Americans acknowledge that they protect competition in Future Markets the Europeans should do so as well—again.

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.