The paper defines, implements and compares two empirical tests of relevant markets. While the 1997 test of the EU Commission compares an initial industry equilibrium to an out-of-equilibrium situation, the 1984 US Merger Guidelines test compares the same initial equilibrium to a second...

Claims alleging anticompetitive product design and redesign lie at the very core of one of antitrust law's most challenging dilemmas: the intersection between innovation and regulation, invention and intervention. For over three decades, courts and scholars have struggled to determine the proper...

Big Tech is in the news. At the center of our political and economic dialogue is the effect that Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have on our lives and what, if anything, governments should do about it. In this short piece, I explain how Big Tech has come under scrutiny, the antitrust...

How far should an industry be allowed to consolidate when competition and innovation are endogenous? We develop a stochastically alternating-move game of dynamic oligopoly, and estimate it using data from the hard disk drive industry, in which a dozen global players consolidated into only three...

This paper examines how information on the purchasing patterns of different customer segments can be used to more accurately evaluate the economic impact of mergers. Using a detailed dataset for the leading manufacturers in the US during the late nineties, I evaluate the welfare effects of the...

Scholarly and popular commentary often assert that markets characterized by intensive patent issuance and enforcement suffer from “patent thickets” that suppress innovation. This assertion is difficult to reconcile with continuous robust levels of R&D investment, coupled with declining...

This paper studies the problem of patent holdout. Part I reviews the economic theory of holdout, with a specific emphasis on patents. It shows that the ordinary concept of holdout refers to the non-transacting conduct of a property owner, and that “patent trespass” is a better...

This paper studies the effectiveness of collusion in the DRAM cartel. Like other high technology products, DRAM is characterized by learning-by-doing and multi-product competition. I hypothesize that collusion is more difficult to sustain on a new generation, where learning is high, than an old...

The “New Madison” approach sounds so promising. Old but new. Updating the classics for the modern era. What could be bad? In a word: everything. The intersection of patent and antitrust law has a long pedigree. For decades, antitrust’s role in patent-based activity has been acknowledged....

Bert Foer is one of the most influential figures in the past quarter century of antitrust. His founding and development of the American Antitrust Institute (AAI) filled a significant hole in late 20th-century antitrust and served as a useful counterweight to the Chicago School. In addition to...