Some of the most significant transactions singled out recently for intensive federal review involve the communications industry. Unfortunately, communications providers face serious and potentially fatal problems of supply. Radio spectrum -- the chief input and most severe constraint on the...

The e-book market is quite remarkable. The economic models for the distribution of this unique product are original and differ from one jurisdiction to another. The antitrust litigations, in both the US and Europe, against Apple and publishing companies as well as the French law on e-Book...

While the Comcast/TWC merger is significant in size, it doesn’t give rise to any plausible theory of anticompetitive harm under modern antitrust analysis. Comcast and TWC don’t compete directly for subscribers in any relevant market; in terms of concentration and horizontal effects, the...

In March of 2019, the European Commission slapped another fine upon Google for infringing European competition rules (€1.49 billion this time). This brought Google’s contribution to the EU budget to a dizzying total of €8.25 billion. Given this massive number, and the geographic location...

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...

Increasingly, people use the internet to connect with one another, access information, and purchase products and services. Along with the growth in the online marketplace have come concerns, as well, particularly regarding both the privacy of personal information as well as competition issues...

Net neutrality is now the law of the land. The FCC argued in the 2015 Open Internet Order that the rules were necessary to preserve the free and open Internet. But do the FCC’s justifications for its rules comport with economic and marketplace realities? This paper proposes to examine the...