The Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Justice Department’s request for information on whether and how to update the antitrust agencies’ merger-enforcement guidelines is based on several faulty premises and appears to presuppose a preferred outcome: stronger (rather than optimal) merger...

Rewheel, a Finnish consultancy, periodically issues reports that it portrays as international competitiveness comparisons of retail prices for mobile wireless services across the globe. However, these comparisons are not accurate representations of the state of competition in the mobile wireless...

In October 2022, Kroger and Albertsons announced their intent to merge the two companies in a deal valued at $24.6 billion. The combined company would be the third largest food and grocery retailer, behind Walmart and Amazon. Based on the Federal Trade Commission’s recently release draft...

For years, regulators and competition watchdogs have expressed concern about competition in the digital advertising business. They note that digital advertising appears to be dominated by a few dominant firms, such as Google, Facebook, and—to a lesser extent—Amazon. Some claim that this...

Rate regulation can take many forms. Rates may be regulated through overt price controls, such as price ceilings or price floors; through less-overt rules governing the pace of price changes; or through quality mandates or restrictions. Some rate regulations can provide short-run benefits to...

Antitrust enforcement makes it difficult to test theories of cartel formation because most attempts to form cartels are blocked. However, federal laws allow U.S. produce growers to operate marketing cartels through devices called marketing orders. These cartels use quantity controls and quality...