Earlier this week, the Open Markets Institute (OMI) released a data set illustrating concentration by industry, and David Leonhardt highlighted it in the New York Times‘ opinion section. While the data itself isn’t anything new – concentration in some sectors has been rising for decades and is not always inherently anti-competitive – the way Open […]
Recent pieces from The Economist on competition and the tech industry all but ignore competition, the expansive definition of the consumer welfare standard, and the importance of the U.S. due process system. In particular, in rating the level of competition among larger firms, The Economist gives Apple a “green light” and Google and Facebook a […]
In a recent Wired piece, Tim Wu ignores economic and market realities in his call for regulation of leading tech services. Wu overlooks that the vibrancy of the tech industry is driven by the ongoing success of start-ups, relying on nostalgia instead of facts about the highly competitive modern technology market. Some research dispelling Wu’s […]
In a recent piece in Scientific American, economist Joseph Stiglitz writes that weak antitrust laws underpin the rise of inequality, arguing, “Their enforcement has weakened—at a time when, if anything, the laws themselves should have been strengthened.” Concentration has modestly increased across all industries measured at the national level. Yet, companies are increasingly competing in […]
Earlier today, several Roosevelt Institute scholars published a piece in Quartz arguing the USMCA, President Trump’s NAFTA replacement, should not have included the consumer welfare standard among its provisions because it is unequipped to deal with what the authors deem concentration problems. But not only does the tech sector not face many of the problems the authors […]
Ahead of tomorrow’s gathering of state attorneys general by Jeff Sessions and the Department of Justice, we gathered expert responses to the meeting and the proposed topic of leading tech services and free speech. The big takeaways: —When threats to legal free speech are disguised as competition concerns, government efforts can appear overtly political, setting […]
Tim Wu wants to break up Facebook and other leading tech services, because “we’re in a time where we need to bring back the controls on bigness,” according to a recent Vergecast, summarized here. Wu’s case overlooks several critical issues. 1. Wu downplays existing competition among tech players (despite having hailed it as a solution […]
In his letter today to FTC Chairman Joseph Simons, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) asked the FTC to look into Google’s search practices. However, the facts haven’t changed since the FTC closed a comprehensive antitrust investigation in 2013. —The FTC found Google’s search practices were pro-consumer, and today search is even more competitive, see our backgrounder […]
Last week former Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post arguing that Europe’s antitrust regime is “stronger” than America’s. But, as Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim recently said, “I don’t measure the antitrust division’s success by the fines or convictions we get or how many cases in litigation we bring. […]
In the wake of Apple’s recent valuation as a $1 trillion company, we continue to see a number of mistakes in competition analysis. Below are three oft-repeated claims that miss the mark with further details below. 1. Yes, economy-wide, wages and business investment have been stagnant, but not in tech where wages are rising and […]
Hostility to innovation and technology diminishes the incredible Internet-enabled opportunities that leading tech services provide: empowering consumers, driving prices down and increasing choice, and providing platforms to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses. It has given us a golden era of entertainment, knowledge, and everything from fashion startups, to booming mom and pop stores, to the latest app.
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