One of the most heated discussions in economics in recent years has concerned the relationship between market structure and innovation. After a half-century of debate and innumerable studies, the consensus is that there is no clear answer to the question. On a concrete level, the uncertainty...

This essay reviews Michael Carrier's recent book, Innovation in the 21st Century. While the book is well-written and full of accessible content, it nevertheless fails in its ambitious effort to defend the concept of an antitrust-relevant "innovation market." The essay notes that there is...

Severe limitations on antitrust enforcement officials' knowledge and the potential impact of ill-advised investigations and prosecutions on markets suggest that officials should exercise extraordinary caution in enforcement of restraints on single-firm conduct. Although it is common to depict...

We study the 1956 consent decree against the Bell System to investigate whether patents held by a dominant firm are harmful for innovation and if so, whether compulsory licensing can provide an effective remedy. The consent decree settled an antitrust lawsuit that charged Bell with having...

Innovation can either be viewed by the competition authorities as a parameter that should be protected from the potential negative effects of a transaction, or it can be utilized by the merging parties as part of a defense argument to set off against or abate the anticompetitive concerns raised...

This paper looks at whether the standard unilateral effects model can be applied to non-price competition parameters such as innovation. This question arises because competition authorities are intervening in horizontal mergers that are found to give rise to a “significant impediment to...

This paper discusses the effects of horizontal mergers on innovation. We rely on the existing academic literature and our own research work to present the various positive and negative effects of mergers on innovation. Our analysis shows that the overall impact of a merger on innovation may be...

Recent merger decisions by competition authorities have revived the debate on the relationship between competition and innovation. This article reviews this issue by drawing on the relevant economic literature, and by placing it in the broader policy debate on the benefits of competitive...

This paper gives a fresh account of competition in the digital economy. Economic analysis in the field of industrial organization remains largely focused on a sophisticated version of the Schumpeter-Arrow debate, which is unresolved and largely irrelevant. We posit the need to look at...