These comments were submitted to the FTC as part of its hearings on “Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century.” As part of our comments, we note the timeliness of the hearings, given that, despite the vast social benefits generated by companies operating in the digital...

These comments were submitted to the FTC as part of its hearings on “Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century.” In these comments, we analyze three overarching topics relevant for the regulation of data: (1) The role of privacy as an element of non-price competition; (2) The...

These comments were submitted to the FTC as part of its hearings on “Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century.” In these comments, we note three high level points: (1) Antitrust policy must avoid the simplistic inference of competitive effects from market structure; (2) HHIs...

Since the original Pitofsky hearings, much has fundamentally changed in the way the firms do businesses. Yet, despite these rapid and fundamental shifts in technology and behavior, we still face many of the same policy challenges as existed twenty years ago (and more). Innovation always yields...

The CWS has been the subject of much discussion lately, largely driven by a seeming uptick in criticism of the standard. This criticism falls generally into two camps. On the one hand, the CWS is understood to be the broadly correct, if imperfect, touchstone for antitrust enforcement. Proponents...

In this comment, we primarily address the fifth topic raised by the Commission (“Are there policy recommendations that would facilitate competition in markets involving data or personal or commercial information that the FTC should consider?”).In short, we argue that the advent of...

Property rights are an essential economic institution. As the great UCLA economist Harold Demsetz famously argued, property rights spur specialization, investment, and competition, which in turn increase productivity, innovation, and wealth throughout the economy.The same holds true for...

In this article we examine the merits the arguments furthered by the field of behavioral law and economics over credit card surcharge fees. Claims about the real-world application of behavioral economic theories should not be uncritically accepted — especially when advanced to challenge a...

If the Supreme Court's recent decision in Apple v. Pepper had hewed to the precedent established by Ohio v. American Express it would have begun its antitrust inquiry with the observation that the relevant market for the provision of app services is an integrated one, in which the overall effect...