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Blog o’ Blogs July

By  |  August 4, 2019
One major issue appears to have taken up a lot of time, sleep, and ink for the Antitrust community this summer: the prospect of breaking up the Big Tech firms, and how this sky-rocketing sector has changed, or should change, the way we think about regulation, competition, privacy, and much else. The shake-up has also revealed opportunities for new ideas and changes to some of the common pillars of merger review, market analysis, and remedies. An exciting summer to be sure…
Breaking up Amazon? Platforms, Private Labels and Entry
The European Commission just announced that it is investigating Amazon. The Commission’s concern is that Amazon is simultaneously acting as a ref and player…
Randal C. Picker (Truth on the Market)
When Writers are a Special Interest: The Press and the Movement to Break Up Big Tech
When Uber and Lyft brought competition to the Seattle taxi market, drivers fought back, asking the city to let them form a cartel to demand higher wages from rideshare companies. If that sounds anticompetitive, it is… 
Ramsi Woodcock (What Am I Missing?)
Companies, Board Members and Officers Take Note: U.S. Antitrust Agencies Are Focused on Interlocking Directorates
The FTC and the DOJ Antitrust Division have again warned companies, along with their board members and officers, of the legal prohibition on interlocking directorates…
Amy Ray & Diana Gillis(Orrick’s Antitrust)
Merger Lore: Dispelling the Myth of the Maverick
There’s always a reason to block a merger. Of all the reasons to block, the maverick notion is the weakest, and it’s well past time to ditch it…
Eric Fruits (Truth on the Market)
Harmful Signals: Cartel Prohibition and Oligopoly Theory in the Age of Machine Learning
The classical legal approach for distinguishing between illicit collusion and legitimate oligopoly conduct is to rely on criteria that relate to the means and the form of how rivals interact…
Stefan Thomas (Oxford Business Law )
Big Tech and Antitrust
Big Tech firms stand accused of many evils, and the clamor to break them up is loud.  Should we fetch our pitchforks? 
John Lopatka (Truth on the Market)
Interview with Professor Raju Parakkal (Video)
Interview with Professor Raju Parakkal of Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, one of the key researchers on the spread of antitrust regimes in the world… 
Dr. Valentin Mircea (State of Competition)
The Rise of Common Ownership: A Call to Arms for Competition Policy?
An observer of cutting-edge law and economics literature may indeed tend to believe that we are approaching a point of ultimate antitrust apocalypse….
Anna Tzanaki (Oxford Business Law)
Promoting Competition Bulletin July 2019
Things have continued apace at the UK’s CMA since the last bulletin in early December, and that is reflected in the annual report released this month…
Andrea Coscelli (Competition and Markets Authority)
The Latest: New DOJ Antitrust Division Policy Makes Compliance Programs More Critical than Ever
The Antitrust Division reported that it has changed its Justice Manual to state that it will consider antitrust compliance at the charging stage in criminal antitrust investigations…
Nicole Castle, Stefan M. Meisner & Paul M. Thompson(Truth on the Market)
Book review: “Making markets work for Africa: markets, developments and competition law in Sub-Saharan Africa” by Eleanor M. Fox and Mor Bakhoum
Developing countries have unique socio-economic issues and market dynamics which many have argued justify a unique approach to the role competition law policy should play…
Editor (Africa Antitrust)
The Justice Department’s ‘Big Tech’ Antitrust Investigation Is Unnecessary Political Theater
Both Democrats and Republicans are cheerleading for government action against Facebook, Google, Amazon, and the rest, but Americans should be skeptical…
Eric Boehm(The Volokh Conspiracy)
The Amazon Investigation: A Prime Example of Contemporary Antitrust
The Commission announced this week the formal opening of a case against Amazon. It had also informally done something quite similar almost a year ago…
Alfonso Lamadrid (Chilling Competition)
Antitrust Division Announces a New Policy to Incentivize Corporate Compliance
This major news has been extensively covered but in case you missed it, on July 11, 2019, Makan Delrahim announced a major reversal in the Antitrust Division’s treatment of Corporate antitrust compliance programs…
Robert Connolly (Cartel Capers)