Over the past two to three decades economics has played an increasingly important role in the development of U.S. antitrust enforcement and policy. This essay first reviews the major facets of U.S. antitrust enforcement and next reviews the ways in which economics - starting from a low base -...

Antitrust discussions in the U.S. have a long tradition of describing intellectual property (IP) – primarily patents and copyrights – in unqualified terms of “monopoly”. Although there have been substantial efforts over the past two decades to pull back from this automatic association,...

The DOJ-FTC Merger Guidelines were developed for and best deal with horizontal mergers where the theory of harm is coordinated effects. The Guidelines deal awkwardly, at best, with mergers where the theory of harm is unilateral effects. The broad body of evidence - from profitability studies,...

The U.S. financial crisis of 2007-2008 has been a searing experience. The popping of a housing bubble exposed the subprime lending debacle, which in turn created a wider financial crisis. In its response to this crisis, the federal government has provided financial assistance to a number of...

The DOJ and FTC monopolization cases against Google and Facebook, respectively, represent the most important federal non-merger antitrust initiatives since (at least) the 1990s. As in any monopolization case, market delineation will be a central feature of both cases – as it was in the du Pont...

This paper develops some important concepts with respect to networks and compatibility. We note that the familiar concept of complementarity lies at the heart of the concept of compatibility. We further note the distinction between two-way networks (e.g., telephones, railroads, the Internet) and...

The question of market definition for monopolization cases - and thus the issue of the possession of market power by the defendant - is crucial for the outcome of these cases. However, unlike antitrust merger analysis, where the DOJ-FTC Horizontal Merger Guidelines has provided a successful...

In October 2020 the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an antitrust suit against Google. It is an alleged monopolization (Sherman Act, Sec. 2) case. In this paper I lay out the main issues in the case and raise an intriguing possibility