Digital Economy
The FTC Needs To Focus Arguments on Technological Transitions After High-Profile Losses
Joshua Gray and Cristian Santesteban argue that the Federal Trade Commission's focus in Meta-Within and Microsoft-Activision on narrow markets like VR fitness apps and consoles missed the boat on the real competition issue: the threat to future competition in nascent markets like VR platforms and cloud gaming.
European Digital Platform Regulation Risks Undermining Itself with Over-Centralization
Recent European digital regulation surrenders traditional key guideposts of European competition law and policy. The over-centralization of European Union antitrust authority and EU legislation risks undermining member state laws and competences. This may privilege platforms and eventually harm competition and consumers, writes Jörg Hoffmann.
Antitrust for the Platform Economy
Friso Bostoen’s new book, Abuse of Platform Power: Leveraging Conduct in Digital Markets under EU Competition Law and Beyond, outlines how antitrust agencies and policymakers should tackle market power in the platform economy. The following is an adaptation of the book’s introduction.
How IT Affects Firm Size, Market Concentration, and the Labor Share
Does investing in information technology (IT) enable firms to “scale without mass” and increase their market share? In a new paper, Erik Brynjolfsson, Wang Jin, and Xiupeng Wang examine how IT affects firm size, market concentration, and the labor share of revenue.
How Should the Law Tackle Rapidly Evolving Financial Technologies?
The last half-century has witnessed an explosion of technology changing how the financial landscape functions for customers and new and legacy banking providers alike....
Why Disruptive Innovation Has Declined Since 2000
Traditional accounts of the growing power of large firms implicate antitrust or political corruption. But in a recent book, economist James Bessen puts the...
Designing Better Antitrust Remedies for the Digital World
Even when antitrust enforcers and courts get it right when finding an anticompetitive infringement, they constantly end up imposing remedies that are inadequate to...
How the Free Software and the IP Wars of the 1990s and 2000s Presaged Today’s Toxic, Concentrated Internet
How did the internet evolve from a relatively decentralized, hybrid, and democratizing space toward a concentrated, privatized environment controlled by a handful of actors?...
The EU’s Attempt at Updating Antitrust Market Definition for the Digital Age
The rise of digital platforms has upended markets and the very act of market definition—the basic unit of antitrust analysis. With the review of...
Fixing Facebook Would Take More Than Collective Action – It Requires Structural Change
With its dominant market power and its role as both social outlet and news provider, Facebook possesses enormous power over the flow of free...
