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...

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...

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...

This issue brief explores the flaws in designating Amazon as something like an “essential facility,” as well as the attendant errors of treating the distribution mechanism of Internet-based commerce as though it were a market definition, and the problems with failing to learn the...

In this comment, we primarily address the first question asked by the Commission (“The state of antitrust and consumer protection law and enforcement, and their development, since the Pitofsky hearings”). However, our comments also speak to several other questions. We do so in part through...