This essay is the introduction to a forthcoming volume entitled, Regulating Innovation: Competition Policy and Patent Law Under Uncertainty (Cambridge U. Press 2009 forthcoming). In addition to introducing all of the papers in the volume, this essay introduces the organizing themes of the...

The advance of digital technology is changing the nature of markets, enhancing the capacity of corporations to extract more consumers' surplus and lower the wages paid to workers. The rise of new technology has also diminished the efficacy of traditional laws to regulate firms and corporations....

Technology lock-in advocates argue that governments should step in to coordinate technology adoption decisions. Due to the presence of network effects, advocates warn that consumers may fail to adopt the best technology, thus missing out on potential benefits. Even worse, consumers may split,...

Recent outcry for antitrust reform argues that U.S. markets have become more concentrated, that large firms’ profit margins have increased, and that part of these changes may be attributed to lax antitrust enforcement since the 1960s. While each of these arguments is part of an intense...

It is in the nature of technological advance to centralize control over production and divorce it from the consumer, placing the consumer at the mercy of the producer. For most of human history, the fight for consumer rights was a fight for democracy, because the state is the ultimate...

Innovation is a flabby concept in antitrust practice, only coming into play in limited situations, as contrasted with its seeming ubiquity in the business pages. Lacking an accurate underlying conception of innovation, the current tools and theories of antitrust are inadequate. For innovation to...

Technology lock-in advocates argue that governments should step in to coordinate technology adoption decisions. Due to the presence of network effects, advocates warn that consumers may fail to adopt the best technology, thus missing out on potential benefits. Even worse, consumers may split,...