Complexity science is widely used across the policy spectrum but not in antitrust. This is unfortunate. Complexity science enables a rich understanding of competition beyond the simplistic descriptions of markets and firms proposed by neoclassical models and their contemporary neo-Brandeisian...

Blockchain may transform transactions the same way the Internet altered the dissemination and nature of information. If that were to be the case, all relationships between companies would change, including prohibited ones such as collusive agreements. For that reason, the stakes are crucial and...

The Rule of Reason, which has come to dominate modern antitrust law, allows defendants the opportunity to justify their conduct by demonstrating “procompetitive” effects. Seizing the opportunity, defendants have begun offering increasingly numerous and creative explanations for their...

Patent settlements between rivals restrain competition in many different ways. Antitrust requires that their anticompetitive effects are reasonably commensurate with the firms’ expectations about (counterfactual) patent litigation. Because these expectations are private and non-verifiable,...

Multiemployer collective bargaining relationships between unions and employer associations easily devolve into legalized cartels. Once unions establish themselves as the bargaining representative for employers’ employees, the employers have much to gain from banding together as an association,...

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...

We provide a novel explanation for why manufacturers want to enforce a minimum resale price (min RPM) on retailers. A manufacturer sells her good via a multi-product retailer to final consumers by charging a linear wholesale price. The manufacturer then maximizes her profit through min RPM...

We present a model to explain why a manufacturer may impose a minimum resale price (min RPM) in a successive monopoly setting. Our argument relies on the retailer having non-contractible choice variables, which could represent the price of a substitute good and/or the effort the retailer exerts...

Vertical restraints, such as vertical integration, exclusive dealing contracts, and tying and bundling practices, have been subject of lively policy and academic discussions. Scholars associated with the Chicago School challenged early foreclosure doctrines by arguing that vertical restraints...

This paper presents an overview of what economists can say about vertical constraints by multi-sided platforms at this stage in the development of our knowledge about the economics of these businesses. It describes the general procompetitive and anticompetitive uses of vertical restraints by...