Blog o’ Blogs August

Competition shaped by EU policy: A voyage into the unknown
EU treaties have set out a particular goal: the establishment of the single market. Achieving the single market is an objective with unclear boundaries regarding tools, stages and expected final outcome…
Enrique Bravo-García (Linklaters)

In FTC v. Qualcomm, Judge Koh Gets Lost in the Weeds
In his latestbook, Tyler Cowen calls big business an “American anti-hero”. Cowen argues that the growing animosity towards successful technology firms is to a large extent unwarranted… 
Dirk Auer (Truth on the Market)

Amazon’s Problem Is Too Much Competition, Not Too Little
Amazon has come under assault in recent weeks for failing to keep “thousands of banned, unsafe, or mislabeled” products sold by third parties off of its site…
Ramsi Woodcock(What am I Missing?)

Recent Developments in Canadian Cartel Enforcement: Is Business Becoming Immune to the Competition Bureau’s Immunity/Leniency Programs?
Merger enforcement in Canada is already seeing the impact of the March 2019 appointment of Matthew Boswell as the new Commissioner of Competition….
Charles Tingley, Mark Katz, Anita Banicevic 
(Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP)

Some Early Thoughts On the Division’s New Policy On Corporate Compliance Programs (From a Guy Who Was Admittedly Against This When He Was With the Division)
There has been a great deal of publicity surrounding the Antitrust Division’s recent announcement that a corporation involved in a criminal antitrust violation may get credit for an antitrust compliance program if certain conditions are met…
Robert E. Connolly (Antitrust Connect)

Ministerial approval Miba/Zollern: A Green Industrial Policy for medium-sized companies
Alea iacta est. Peter Altmaier has decided. Miba and Zollern may merge by ministerial approval. But: only under certain conditions. Maximilian Konrad took a closer look at the decision of the German Federal Minister of Economics…
Maximilian Konrad (D’Kart)

A Federal Antitrust Investigation Can Cause an Antitrust Blizzard
I am from Minnesota, so I am quite familiar with blizzards. They may be interesting to watch through a window from a room warmed by a fireplace, but you don’t want to get caught in one… 
Jarod Bona (The Antitrust Attorney)

Global Declining Competition
Studies of the evolution of market power since 2000 have focused mostly on publicly traded US firms. This column introduces a new global study that incorporates private firms and decomposes the aggregate effect into intensive and extensive margins….
Federico Diez, Jiayue Fan, and Carolina Villegas-Sanchez (Pro-Market)

The Dilemma of Shareholder Engagement by Large Fund Groups
A small number of large fund groups have become an increasingly influential force by controlling a significant share of publicly-traded companies, a phenomenon often termed ‘common ownership’…
Suren Gomtsian (Oxford Business Law)

Candid impressions from a trip in the heart of the Brazilian Antitrust scene
I spent last week in Brazil, where I was invited by the International Chamber of Commerce to discuss blockchain and antitrust. The event has been very informative, a great success! I warmly recommend you to go to the 2nd edition…
Thibault Schrepel(Le Concurrentialiste)

How Amazon’s Pricing Policies Squeeze Sellers and Result in Higher Prices for Consumers
Amazon’s price matching policies, which were meant to ensure its dominant position, diminished the ability of brands to control how their products are distributed…
Shaoul Sussman (Pro-Market)

AT&T/Time Warner: Rube Goldberg Machines, Bob Dylan Quotes and a Shifting View of Video Programming Competition
My partners Mark Palchick and Marty Stern have written a good article on the District of Columbia’s recent antitrust ruling rejecting the U.S. Justice Department’s efforts to block AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner…
Jason Hicks(Womble Distribution)

The Limits of Private Action: What the Past 40 Years Taught Us About the Perils of Unregulated Markets
The two big ideas that animated American public policy since the end of World War II, employer-sponsored social benefits and neoliberalism, are failures. We need better options…
Ganesh Sitaraman and Anne L. Alstott (Pro-Market)

The Capitalist Paradox: How Cooperation Enables Free Market Competition
Given the obvious benefits of markets over socialism, why do so many still oppose markets? I have been concerned with this issue for many years. Given the current state of American politics, the question is even more important…
Paul H. Rubin (Truth on the Market)