The administrative state is leveraging algorithms to influence individuals' private decisions. Agencies have begun to write rules to shape for-profit websites such as Expedia and have launched their own online tools such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's mortgage calculator. These...

Although price-fixing conspiracies are inherently unstable, many cartels manage to endure, often for long periods. Many successful cartels have hierarchical structures made up of high-level executives (principals) and lower-level managers (agents). For these cartels, agency cost theory could...

There is now a professional consensus among economists that multisided platforms are the main form of business organization in many industries; that these platforms face interdependent demand from multiple groups of customers; and that profit-maximization in the face of this interdependent...

One of the most intractable competition issues for the European Commission (the “Commission”) over the last ten years has been to define the circumstances in which the licensing conduct or litigation strategy of a standard-essential patent (often referred to as “SEP”) holders amount to...

This paper examines the economics of litigation and settlement of patent disputes arising from Paragraph IV ANDA filings under the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act (“Hatch-Waxman Act”) within the framework set out in FTC v. Actavis. Recent economic analyses of reverse...

It is a familiar scenario in U.S. antitrust litigation: The plaintiffs allege that a pattern of identical pricing (or refusals to deal) is "concerted" and therefore per se illegal; the defendant responds that the practice is merely "consciously parallel" or "interdependent" and therefore legal....

One of the lessons of US private antitrust enforcement is that limitations on the rights of the defendant and the plaintiffs' standing to sue should not be imposed lightly. Three Supreme Court decisions in Hanover Shoe, Illinois Brick and ARC America have resulted in a complex and unwieldy...

A patent challenger who defeats a patent wins a prize that it must share with the whole world, including all its competitors. This forced sharing undermines an alleged infringer's rea-son for fighting the patent case to the finish especially if the patent owner offers an attractive settlement....

One of the beneficial innovations for claimants introduced by the EU Competition Damages Directive is the rebuttable presumption of harm in cartel cases enshrined in Article 17(2). Especially for follow-on claimants, i.e. claimants who base their case on a cartel case that has already been...

One of the explicit aims of the Directive on competition damages actions (the Directive) is to make the quantification of harm resulting from violations of European Union (EU) competition rules easier for damages claimants. One of the several ways envisioned by the Directive to achieve that aim...