Issues

Understanding Online Markets and Antitrust Analysis

This paper considers the application of traditional antitrust analysis to online markets. This paper identifies several ways in which online markets differ from regular markets. Most online markets are multi-sided, and entry barriers are low.

Does Antitrust Have a Role to Play in Regulating Big Data?

This paper reviews studies that consider whether antitrust law should be used to regulate big data. Most conclude that such a use of antitrust law could harm innovation and consumers. Generally, the use of big data supports competition and benefits consumers.

FRAND (And Industrial Policy) in China

Some patents must be licensed under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. China’s Anti-Monopoly Law (AML) empowers Chinese authorities to decide cases involving such licenses. Because the Chinese economy is so large, Chinese decisions will affect licensing worldwide.

Antitrust via Rulemaking: Competition Catalysts

Some observers note a decline in competition in American industry; fewer new firms are entering the market, and markets are becoming more concentrated. Federal and state agencies can devise regulations to catalyze competition.

Antitrust and Intellectual Property: A Brief Introduction

This chapter explores the conflict between antitrust law and intellectual property (IP) rights. Antitrust law aims at limiting monopoly power, while IP rights tend to establish limited monopolies in ideas, but IP rights rarely confer the ability to raise prices without losing customers.

Patent Assertion Entities and Competition Policy

Firms that own and license patents but do not produce anything are known as patent assertion entities (PAE), or patent trolls. PAE can harm competition and innovation. This book collects studies of PAEs and competition policy from the United States, China, Korea, and Europe.

Blind Spot: The Attention Economy and the Law

Firms like Google and Facebook rely on consumer attention, a limited resource. Consumer protection laws and antitrust law assume that harm must be monetary, and do not effectively control problems that arise from unwanted intrusions on our attention.

Antitrust Provides a More Reasonable Regulatory Framework than Net Neutrality

In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) imposed network neutrality rules on Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The rules depressed investment and harmed consumers. In 2017, the FCC started a proceeding to end net neutrality regulation.

Platform Ecosystems: How Developers Invert the Firm

This paper describes why firms like Apple, Microsoft, and Google choose to orchestrate the creation of products by outside developers rather than to create product internally. Firms that produce digital products like software benefit most from this strategy, because of knowledge spillovers.

Law, Social Welfare, and Net Neutrality

Net neutrality rules bar broadband carriers from charging different prices to different Internet users, but this would mean that ordinary consumers are paying more for Internet service so that firms like Netflix can pay less.