Antitrust & Competition Policy Blog

Market Definition in Online Markets

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol

Michael Baye, the Director of the FTC's Bureau of Economics has some great slides on Market Definition in Online Markets.

Benefits from Private Antitrust Enforcement: An Analysis of Forty Cases

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol

In what is an important addition to antitrust scholarship, Josh Paul Davis, University of San Francisco - School of Law and Robert  H. Lande, University of Baltimore Law School have written Benefits from Private Antitrust Enforcement: An Analysis of Forty Cases.

ABSTRACT: The goal of this Report is to take a first step toward providing an empirical basis for assessing whether private enforcement of the antitrust laws is serving its intended purposes and is in the public interest. To do this the Report assembles, aggregates, and analyzes information about forty of the largest recent successful private antitrust cases. This information includes, inter alia, the amount of money each action recovered, what proportion of the money was recovered from foreign entities, whether the private litigation was preceded by government action, the attorneys' fees awarded to plaintiffs' counsel, on whose behalf money was recovered (direct purchasers, indirect purchasers, or a competitor), and the kind of claim the plaintiffs asserted (rule of reason, per se, or a combination of the two). The article also compares the amounts collected from all antitrust violations together, and also from cases that also resulted in criminal penalties, to the total of all criminal antitrust fines imposed during the same period by the U.S. Department of Justice. This information is then used to help formulate policy conclusions about the desirability and efficacy of private enforcement of the antitrust laws.

PhD Student Conference This Week at The Interdisciplinary Centre for Competition Law and Policy

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol

This week will be the first ever international PhD student conference at the Queen Mary, University of London Interdisciplinary Centre for Competition Law and Policy.  The schedule of papers is available here.

Shyam Khemani Joins MICRA

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol

As the Global Competition Review reported yesterday, Shyam Khemani has joined consulting firm MICRA.   Shyam retired last month from the World Bank, where he was the competition policy specialist.  Shyam has done much good work over the years in promoting competition policy around the developing world and he will be missed in his World Bank role.  I had a chance to chat with him most recently last month at the DOJ/FTC Workshop on International Technical Assistance (see my papers on antitrust technical assistance here and here).

Implementing the Hypothetical Monopolist SSNIP Test with Multi-Product Firms

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol

Serge Moresi, Steven Salop, and John Woodbury describe how to implement the hypothetical monopolist SSNIP test for market definition in the context of merger cases where firms produce multiple differentiated products in their paper from the current issue of the Antitrust Source, Implementing the Hypothetical Monopolist SSNIP Test with Multi-Product Firms.

Winner of Tenth Annual Law Student Writing Competition of the ABA Section of Antitrust Law is My Research Assistant

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol

I am pleased to announce that my research assistant, John Henry Kilper, has won first prize in the Tenth Annual Law Student Writing Competition of the ABA Section of Antitrust Law.  John won the award for his article A Bundle of Trouble: An Analysis of How the Lower Courts Have Handled Bundled Discounts Since LePage's Inc. v. 3M, 72 Mo. L. Rev. 1363 (2007).

As the top prize winner in the competition, John has been invited to Washington, D.C., where he will receive his prize during the ABA Section of Antitrust Law's Spring Meeting, March 26-28, 2008.

Download kilper20article.pdf

   

Federal Trade Commission Bureau of Economics Speaker Series

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol

Date	Speaker/Paper/Host
Feb. 7	Ben Atkinson (Competition Bureau Canada) “Price Cycling” NJ Avenue Conference Center Room B
Feb. 21	Robert Clark (HEC) "Market Structure and the Diffusion of Electronic Banking” NJ Avenue Conference Center Room B
Feb. 28	Kim Sau Chung (University of Minnesota) “Loopholes”
Mar. 6	CANCELLED Bob Hall (Stanford University) “The Incentive to Start New Companies: Evidence from Venture Capital” NJ Avenue Conference Center Room A
Mar. 13	Rachel Soloveichik (Bureau of Economic Analysis) “Family Transfers in Rural Mexico, An Application to Risk Sharing and Labor Supply Elasticity” NJ Avenue Conference Center Room A
Mar. 27	Jeff Prince (Cornell University) Measuring Welfare and the Effects of Regulation in a Government-Created Market: The Case of Medicare Part D Plans NJ Avenue Conference Center Room A
Apr. 10	Chris Garmon (Federal Trade Commission) "An Empirical Test of Bargaining Theory: Major League Baseball's Rule IV Draft" NJ Avenue Conference Center Room B
Apr. 17	Joe Farrell (Berkeley) “What Is (or Isn’t) the Competitive Process?”
Apr. 24	Emily Oster (University of Chicago) “Routes of Infection: Exports and HIV Incidence in Sub-Saharan Africa” NJ Avenue Conference Center Room B
May 1	Philip Leslie (Stanford University) NJ Avenue Conference Center Room C
May 8	Claudio Lucarelli (Cornell University) NJ Avenue Conference Center Room B
May 15	Frank Wolak (Stanford University)
May 29	Greg Crawford (FCC) NJ Room 4100
Unless otherwise noted, all seminars will take place on Thursdays at 2:30pm in the ground floor Conference Center located at 601 New Jersey Ave. NW. No prior security clearance is necessary except for the seminars held in room 4100. Address inquiries to Chris Adams (CADAMS@ftc.gov) or Tammy John (tjohn@ftc.gov).

More FTC Senior Departures

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol

Another week, another significant set of government departures-- the end of an administration tends to have this effect.  Jeff Schmidt, the Director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition is rumored to be leaving for Linklaters while the FTC's Deputy GC, John Graubert , has joined Covington.

An Examination of the Efficiency, Foreclosure, and Collusion Rationales for Vertical Takeovers

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol

Jaideep Shenoy, Georgia State University - Department of Finance, suggests that vertical integration is not anti-competitive in his paper An Examination of the Efficiency, Foreclosure, and Collusion Rationales for Vertical Takeovers.

ABSTRACT: We investigate the efficiency, foreclosure, and collusion rationales for a large sample of vertical takeovers. The efficiency rationale posits that vertical integration prevents future holdup between non-integrated suppliers and customers. In contrast, the foreclosure and collusion rationales suggest that vertical integration harms competition. To distinguish between these hypotheses, we examine the announcement period wealth effects of the merging firms, acquirer rivals, target rivals, and corporate customers. Our results suggest that firms alter their vertical boundaries in a manner that is consistent with the efficiency rationale. Our tests do not find evidence supportive of the anti-competitive rationales for vertical integration.

Materials on European Community Law of Competition

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol

This past month, Oxford University Press released the 2008 edition of Bellamy & Child: Materials on European Community Law of Competition.

Description: This fully up-to-date volume of European Community Law competition materials includes all of the relevant legislation, Commission Notices and Guidelines, including industry sector specific legislation, notices and guidelines and extensive coverage of the rules on State Aids. It will provide a one-stop resource for competition and antitrust practitioners worldwide.

Designed with busy practitioners in mind, as a new feature it has footnotes immediately below individual recitals and articles where comment is required, for ease of use. These footnotes include the original OJ notes, editorial notes regarding amendments, and as a major enhancement, thorough pinpoint references to specific paragraphs where relevant commentary can be found in the new, sixth edition of Bellamy & Child: European Community Law of Competition.