scholarly journals Big Tech Acquisitions and the Potential Competition Doctrine: The Case of Facebook

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-60
Author(s):  
Mark Glick ◽  
Catherine Ruetschlin
Keyword(s):  
Chicago School ◽  
Structural Approach ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
Short History ◽  
Dominant Firm ◽  
Potential Competition ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Competitive Rivalry

The Big Tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple, have individually and collectively engaged in an unprecedented number of acquisitions. When a dominant firm purchases a start-up that could be a future entrant and thereby increase competitive rivalry, it raises a potential competition issue. Unfortunately, the antitrust law of potential competition mergers is ill-equipped to address tech mergers. We contend that the Chicago School’s assumptions and policy prescriptions hobbled antitrust law and policy on potential competition mergers. We illustrate this problem with the example of Facebook. Facebook has engaged in 90 completed acquisitions in its short history (documented in the Appendix to this paper). Many antitrust commentators have focused on the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions as cases of mergers that have reduced potential competition. We show the impotence of the potential competition doctrine applied to these two acquisitions. We suggest that the remedy for Chicago School damage to the potential competition doctrine is a return to an empirically tractable structural approach to potential competition mergers.

Experimental Economics for Antitrust Law and Policy

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Theo Normann
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Economics ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
Law And Policy

scholarly journals The Influence of Economic Theories and Schools on Competition Law in terms of Vertical Agreements

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (18) ◽  
pp. 153-180
Author(s):  
Zbigniew Jurczyk
Keyword(s):  
Competition Policy ◽  
Evaluation Criteria ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Chicago School ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
Competitive Effects ◽  
Economic Theories ◽  
The Past ◽  
Antitrust Analysis ◽  
Harvard School

The paper aims at showing the influence and the views espoused by economic theories and schools of economics on competition policy embedded in antitrust law and conducted by competition authorities in the field of vertical agreements. The scope of the paper demonstrates how substantially the economization of antitrust law has changed the assessment as to the harmfulness of vertical agreements. The analysis of economic aspects of vertical agreements in antitrust analysis allows one to reveal their pro-competitive effects and benefits, with the consumer being their beneficiary. The basic instrument of the said economization is that antitrust bodies draw on specific economic models and theories that can be employed in their practice. Within the scope of the paper, the author synthesizes the role and influence of those models and schools of economics on the application of competition law in the context of vertical agreements. In presenting, one after another, the theories and schools of economics which used to, or are still dealing with competition policy the author emphasises that in its nature this impact was more or less direct. Some of them remain at the level of general principals and axiology of competition policy, while others, in contrast, delineate concrete evaluation criteria and show how the application of those criteria changes the picture of anti-competitive practices; in other words, why vertical agreements, which in the past used to be considered to restrain competition, are no longer perceived as such. The paper presents the models and recommendations of neoclassical economics, the Harvard School, the Chicago and Post-Chicago School, the ordoliberal school, the Austrian and neoAustrian school as well as the transaction cost theory.

scholarly journals Structural Labor Rights

2021 ◽  
pp. 651
Author(s):  
Hiba Hafiz
Keyword(s):  
Bargaining Power ◽  
National Income ◽  
Labor Law ◽  
Structural Approach ◽  
Labor Rights ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
Collective Rights ◽  
Bargaining Position ◽  
Social Scientific

American labor law was designed to ensure equal bargaining power between workers and employers. But workers’ collective power against increasingly dominant employers has disintegrated. With union density at an abysmal 6.2 percent in the private sector—a level unequaled since the Great Depression— the vast majority of workers depend only on individual negotiations with employers to lift stagnant wages and ensure upward economic mobility. But decentralized, individual bargaining is not enough. Economists and legal scholars increasingly agree that, absent regulation to protect workers’ collective rights, labor markets naturally strengthen employers’ bargaining power over workers. Existing labor and antitrust law have failed to step in, leaving employers free to coordinate and consolidate labor-market power while constraining workers’ ability to do the same. The dissolution of workers’ collective rights has resulted in spiking income inequality: workers have suffered economy-wide wage stagnation and a declining share of the national income for decades. To resolve this crisis, some scholars have advocated for ambitious labor law reforms, like sector-wide bargaining, while others have turned to antitrust law to tackle employer power. While these proposals are vital, they overlook an existing opportunity already contained in the labor law that would avoid the political and doctrinal obstacles to such large-scale reforms. This Article argues for a “structural” approach to the labor law that revives and modernizes its equal bargaining power purpose through deploying innovative social scientific analysis. A “structural” approach is one that takes into account workers’ bargaining power relative to employers in determining the scope of substantive labor rights and in resolving disputes. Because employers’ current buyer power strengthens their ability to indefinitely hold out on worker demands in the employment bargain, the “structural” approach seeks to deploy social scientific tools to tailor the labor law’s provisions so that they resituate workers to a bargaining position from which they could equally hold out. This Article makes three key contributions. First, it documents the dispersion and misalignment of workers’ collective rights under current labor law, detailing the historical narrowing of workers’ collective rights to limited tactics by a small set of workers against highly protected individual enterprises and the concomitant rise of employer power (Part I). Second, it introduces and schematizes the wealth of social scientific literature relevant for evaluating the relative bargaining power of employers and employees (Part II). And finally, it offers concrete proposals for how to apply these social scientific tools and insights to three areas of the National Labor Relation Board’s adjudication and regulatory authority: the determination of “employer”/”employee” status, the determination of employees’ substantive rights under section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), and the determination of what counts as sanctionable unfair labor practices under section 8 of the NLRA (Part III).

A Short History and Thematic Overview

2021 ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Victor V. Ramraj ◽  
Matthew Little
Keyword(s):  
Global Scale ◽  
Complex Environment ◽  
Short History ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Emergency Powers ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
The World ◽  
Containment Measures ◽  
Sheer Size

This chapter provides a short history and epidemiological overview of the Covid-19 pandemic, from its origin in Wuhan, China, to its spread across Asia and around the world. It identifies the five law and policy themes discussed in this book—first wave containment measures; emergency powers; technology, science, and expertise; politics, religion, and governance; and economy, climate, and sustainability—and concludes with some reflections and questions on Asia’s role in formulating responses to a pandemic in particular, and global crises more generally. Although Covid-19 quickly became a global pandemic, a focus on responses in Asia is both practical and intellectually defensible for three main reasons. First, China was the epicentre of the pandemic, which spread throughout January and February to other parts of the region. Second, Asia’s legal and political diversity provides a complex environment in which to study the challenges of policy responses and inter-governmental coordination, even without shifting to the global scale. Finally, Asia’s sheer size complicates matters even further.

Exclusion, Invasion and Abuse: Competition Law and its Constitutional Context

2010 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 183-224
Author(s):  
Daniel Francis
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
The Third ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Political Response ◽  
Broad Type ◽  
Orthodox View

Abstract The orthodox view of antitrust, or competition, law is that it should be interpreted and enforced purely to maximise economic efficiency. This chapter argues that it is by no means so clear that the maximization of efficiency should be the sole aim of competition law, either as a matter of common-law tradition or as a matter of ‘original’ legislative intent. Moreover, such a narrow approach neglects the important social and political components and consequences of antitrust policy and adjudication. This chapter further argues that antitrust law exhibits a striking resemblance, in many ways, to constitutional law, in particular to the extent that it constitutes a social and political response, administered by courts, to three particularly problematic applications of power—the ‘exclusion, invasion and abuse’ of the title. The first section of the chapter introduces these themes. In the second section, the exclusion-invasion-abuse model is described and the implications of each broad type of rule are explored. In the third section, the historical development of modern antitrust law is traced in order to show that the ‘pure efficiency’ standard lacks any credible historical claim to particular authority or authenticity. The fourth and final section, a brief survey of competing normative accounts of antitrust law offers in order to demonstrate the extent to which a myopic focus on efficiency can occlude the underlying policy consequences of antitrust law and policy-making.

Exclusion, Invasion and Abuse: Competition Law and its Constitutional Context

2010 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 183-224
Author(s):  
Daniel Francis
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
The Third ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Political Response ◽  
Broad Type ◽  
Orthodox View

AbstractThe orthodox view of antitrust, or competition, law is that it should be interpreted and enforced purely to maximise economic efficiency. This chapter argues that it is by no means so clear that the maximization of efficiency should be the sole aim of competition law, either as a matter of common-law tradition or as a matter of ‘original’ legislative intent. Moreover, such a narrow approach neglects the important social and political components and consequences of antitrust policy and adjudication. This chapter further argues that antitrust law exhibits a striking resemblance, in many ways, to constitutional law, in particular to the extent that it constitutes a social and political response, administered by courts, to three particularly problematic applications of power—the ‘exclusion, invasion and abuse’ of the title. The first section of the chapter introduces these themes. In the second section, the exclusion-invasion-abuse model is described and the implications of each broad type of rule are explored. In the third section, the historical development of modern antitrust law is traced in order to show that the ‘pure efficiency’ standard lacks any credible historical claim to particular authority or authenticity. The fourth and final section, a brief survey of competing normative accounts of antitrust law offers in order to demonstrate the extent to which a myopic focus on efficiency can occlude the underlying policy consequences of antitrust law and policy-making.

scholarly journals When Economics Met Antitrust: The Second Chicago School and the Economization of Antitrust Law

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
PATRICE BOUGETTE ◽  
MARC DESCHAMPS ◽  
FRÉDÉRIC MARTY
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Competition Policy ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Chicago School ◽  
The United States ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
Antitrust Enforcement ◽  
Minor Influence

In this article, the authors interrogate legal and economic history to analyze the process by which the Chicago School of Antitrust emerged in the 1950s and became dominant in the United States. They show that the extent to which economic objectives and theoretical views shaped the inception of antitrust law. After establishing the minor influence of economics in the promulgation of U.S. competition law, they highlight U.S. economists’ caution toward antitrust until the Second New Deal and analyze the process by which the Chicago School developed a general and coherent framework for competition policy. They rely mainly on the seminal and programmatic work of Director and Levi (1956) and trace how this theoretical paradigm became collective—that is, the “economization” process in U.S. antitrust. Finally, the authors discuss the implications and possible pitfalls of such a conversion to economics-led antitrust enforcement.

scholarly journals Katsinovas Framework Prototype Apps Hardware as based Innovation Readiness Level

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 2849-2855
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Technology Development ◽  
Market Potential ◽  
Potential Competition ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Readiness Level ◽  
Specific Community

Start-up industry, start-up companies go into the moldy lifestyle of young people to form a community to help solve more specific community problems and accurate results. Application testing on community applications is used as alpha 1 before the final release. It is prioritized that the concepts, components and application resolution of serious problems be alleviated. Until the performance. This test is not just an application but a hardware device created by Blueprint. The application of testing uses the framework of Katsinov, up to level 6 where each level explains the concepts, components, completion, enthusiasm or market potential, competition, technology development.

Transnational Antitrust Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 314-328
Author(s):  
Hannah L. Buxbaum
Keyword(s):  
Antitrust Law ◽  
Market Regulation ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Globalized Economy ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
International Antitrust

In light of the significant diversity that remains among legal systems regarding the purpose and substance of market regulation, it is no surprise that efforts to develop a body of international antitrust law have failed. Instead, we rely on a diverse set of norms and transnational practices to regulate the increasingly globalized economy. This chapter discusses those practices, focusing on the actors and institutions involved. Section II addresses the production of substantive antitrust law at different levels (national, regional, and international) and discusses some of the ways in which these norms spread across legal systems. Section III turns to mechanisms for improving cooperation among legal systems in the enforcement of divergent regulatory norms, as well as to continuing sites of contestation among regimes. Section IV concludes with an analysis of the prospects for increased convergence in the field of antitrust law and policy.

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