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More on the Fighting Antitrust Agencies
One additional observation on the WSJ story Paul mentioned. Much has been written about the strained relationship between the FTC and DOJ in antitrust matters. There has, of course, never been a more...
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Sacrificing Consumer Welfare in the Search Bias Debate
Eric Clemons and Nehal Madhani have a posted a series of short blog posts on the Huffington Post focusing on Google, antitrust, and more specifically, vertical integration and search (Part I, Part II,...
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Barnett v. Barnett on Antitrust
Tom Barnett (Covington & Burling) represents Expedia in, among other things, its efforts to persuade a US antitrust agency to bring a case against Google involving the alleged use of its search...
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House Committee on the Judiciary Hearing on the AT&T / T-Mobile Merger
Tomorrow morning. I’ll post my written testimony here tomorrow. Hearing on: “How Will the Proposed Merger Between AT&T and T-Mobile Affect Wireless Telecommunications Competition?” Thursday...
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Debiasing: Firms Versus Administrative Agencies
Daniel Kahnemann and co-authors discuss, in the most recent issue of the Harvard Business Review (HT: Brian McCann), various strategies for debiasing individual decisions that impact firm performance....
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A couple of quick thoughts on the DOJ’s filing to block AT&T/T-Mobile
As Josh noted, the DOJ filed a complaint today to block the merger. I’m sure we’ll have much, much more to say on the topic, but here are a few things that jump out at me from perusing the complaint:...
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Why Is Sprint’s Stock Surging Upon the Announcement of the DOJ’s Challenge to...
Basic economic theory underlies the conventional antitrust wisdom that if a merger makes the merging party a more effective competitorby lowering its costs, rivals facing this more effective competitor...
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Why Did Sprint Pile On the DOJ’s AT&T / T-Mobile Suit?
So, the AT&T / T-Mobile transaction gets more and more interesting. Sprint has filed a complaint challenging the transaction. I’ve been commenting on the weakness of the DOJ complaint and in...
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Exclusion Still Doesn’t Explain Verizon’s Stock Price Non-Reaction to the DOJ...
Yale’s George Priest authored an op-ed in the WSJ on September 6th in which he raised a few of the arguments discussed here at TOTM over the past several weeks regarding the proposed AT&T /...
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ABA Roundtable Discussion Tomorrow on the AT&T/T-Mobile Merger
As I have posted before, I was disappointed that the DOJ filed against AT&T in its bid to acquire T-Mobile. The efficacious provision of mobile broadband service is a complicated business, but it...
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DOJ Antitrust to Close Field Offices
The DOJ has announced that it will close 4 Antitrust Division Field Offices. From the DOJ press release: Consolidate Antitrust Division field office space in Atlanta, Cleveland, Dallas and...
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Google, Vertical Integration, and Beer
First, Google had the audacity to include a map in search queries suggesting a user wanted a map. Consumers liked it. Then came video. Then, they came for the beer: Google’s first attempt at brewing...
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Was the Whirlpool/Maytag Merger Anticompetitive After All?
One of the most controversial merger policy decisions during the Bush administration was the DOJ’s failure to bring a complaint against the Whirlpool/Maytag merger. Indeed, the decision was even...
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My New Empirical Study on Defining and Measuring Search Bias
Tomorrow is the deadline for Eric Schmidt to send his replies to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s follow up questions from his appearance at a hearing on Google antitrust issues last month. At the...
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What Does the Stock Market Tell Us in the Aftermath of the Failed AT&T /...
In the wake of the announcement that AT&T and T-Mobile are walking away from their proposed merger, there will be ample time to discuss whether the deal would have passed muster in federal court,...
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Research Bleg: Competition Settlements With Conditions (Arguably) Contrary to...
Judge Ginsburg and I are working on a project for an upcoming festschrift in honor of Bill Kovacic. The project involves the role of settlements in the pursuit of the goals of antitrust. In...
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The Apple E-Book Kerfuffle Meets Alfred Marshall’s Principles of Economics
From a pure antitrust perspective, the real story behind the DOJ’s Apple e-book investigation is the Division’s deep commitment to the view that Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) clauses are anticompetitive...
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DOJ’s Latest on Apple Investigation
From the WSJ: Publishers argue that the agency model promotes competition by allowing more booksellers to thrive. They say Amazon had sold e-books below cost and that agency pricing saved book...
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More Misguided Derision from Critics of the Verizon-SpectrumCo Wireless Deal
The pending wireless spectrum deal between Verizon Wireless and a group of cable companies (the SpectrumCo deal, for short) continues to attract opprobrium from self-proclaimed consumer advocates and...
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Apple Responds to the DOJ e-Books Complaint
Apple has filed its response to the DOJ Complaint in the e-books case. Here is the first paragraph of the Answer: The Government’s Complaint against Apple is fundamentally flawed as a matter of fact...
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