Three Must-Read Perspectives On Competition In Tech
As the debate over tech competition continues, here are three expert perspectives to keep in mind. For more information, visit SpringboardCCIA.com.
University of Pennsylvania Professor Herbert Hovenkamp: Antitrust law’s focus “should be on maximizing output, which benefits both consumers and workers.”
“Any time a merger or other practice reduces a firm’s costs or improves its products or services, it boosts competition by putting pressure on obsolete or less efficient rivals. But protecting these rivals should not be the purpose of the antitrust laws. Rather, the focus of antitrust laws should be on maximizing output, which benefits both consumers and workers.”
University of California, Berkeley Professor Carl Shapiro: As antitrust inquiries proceed, “let us avoid a ‘big is bad’ mentality and let us truly have the interests of consumers in mind.”
“So I say: let these inquiries proceed when suspicious conduct can be identified. But in doing so, let us avoid a ‘big is bad’ mentality and let us truly have the interests of consumers in mind. We learned long ago that proper antitrust enforcement is about protecting consumers, and protecting the competitive process, not about protecting competitors. We must not forget that guiding principle. Indeed, that principle is especially important in markets subject to large economies of scale, whether those scale economies are based on traditional production economies or based on network effects, which are often important in the tech sector.”
The Progressive Policy Institute’s Michael Mandel: The decline of the real price of advertising “represents an increase in competition in the advertising market, not a decrease.”
“Second, the real price of advertising has fallen sharply. This represents an increase in competition in the advertising market, not a decrease. Before the internet, many newspapers and television stations effectively had oligopolistic power in their local markets. If a retailer or other local business wanted to run an ad to reach local customers, they had a limited number of options. Today, advertisers have many more channels to reach buyers, suggesting that the price of advertising should be lower as competition intensifies.”