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Truth on the Market

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Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 00:51:38

Seriously, Alpha = 0? Have You Read the Bill?

Posted on January 28, 2009
Not to harp on the same point over and over, but can anybody look at this list from the stimulus package with a straight face and claim that the absence of inefficient government spending (HT: Peter Klein)? $1 billion for Amtrak $2 billion for child-care subsidies $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts $400 million for global-warming [...

Stop Brad DeLong!

Posted on January 27, 2009
Few people in my small sphere of the world are taken as seriously as Brad DeLong, while still being as much of an ass as he is. The latest stems from his juvenile criticism of this masterful analysis of the stimulus situation by John Cochrane. Brad’s juvenile criticism is here...

Alpha = 0?

Posted on January 26, 2009
Geoff’s post about Kevin Murphy’s recent slides and analytical framework for thinking about the stimulus are worth reading and if you haven’t yet. Here’s a link to the video. Here’s Murphy’s analysis in a nutshell for those who haven’t: A Framework for Thinking about the Stimulus Package Let G = increase in government spending 1-?= value [...

The Know Betters’ Stimulus Plan

Posted on January 26, 2009
National Economic Council Chairman Larry Summers was on Meet the Press yesterday defending President Obama’s proposed fiscal stimulus plan, which is heavily weighted toward government spending and away from tax cuts (and, to the extent it reduces taxes, does so via tax credits without cutting marginal rates)...

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Is the Stimulus Package Obama’s Patriot Act?

Posted on January 26, 2009
Why are the proponents of the stimulus package so reluctant to have a serious, non ad hominem-laden debate about whether it will, in fact, stimulate the economy? Because that’s not really its point. As Steve Horwitz explains: Bottom line: the more that those of us who are skeptical continue to even refer to [...

“I Pledge to Be a Servant to Our President”

Posted on January 23, 2009
I’m sorry, but this is just plain creepy. (Watch to the end.) It’s one thing to respect the President, to give him the benefit of the doubt, and to support him when he does the right thing. Hollywood would do well to do more of those things, and I will certainly do them for [...

Varney Instead of Elhauge at DOJ?

Posted on January 22, 2009
So says Bloomberg.

Bork and the Antitrust Paradox Revisited

Posted on January 22, 2009
The Harvard Journal on Law and Public Policy recently published a symposium on the contributions of Judge Robert Bork. Readers of TOTM might be interested in three essays on Bork’s enduring contributions to antitrust law from Judge Frank Easterbrook, Judge Douglas Ginsburg, and Professor George Priest...

Likely Monopolization Suit Targets

Posted on January 21, 2009
I’ve written previously about the upcoming surge in monopolization enforcement deriving from a “perfect storm” of sorts, including: (1) an incoming administration dedicated to “reinvigorate antitrust enforcement,” (2) an outgoing administration heavily and publicly criticized for lack of monopolization enforcement, and (3) interjurisdictional competition between the US and EU as the world’s primary antitrust enforcer [...

George W. Bush’s stinky parting gift

Posted on January 20, 2009
Bush has proved himself to be a statist, protectionist ignoramus on many occasions. But this, one of his final acts in office, is simply appalling: People in the southern French district of Lozeyron are having a hard time swallowing US President George W...

Sykuta on Bailing Out the Italians

Posted on January 20, 2009
My friend and Missouri colleague, Mike Sykuta, sent me the following insightful comments about the expected Fiat/Chrysler deal: Today?s Wall Street Journal reports that Fiat is expected to announce a new partnership with Chrysler LLC that will, in the end, result in Fiat taking control of Chrysler...

More on Error Costs

Posted on January 20, 2009
Speaking of error cost analysis, this paper from a trio of lawyers in the General Counsel’s Policy Studies’ group at the FTC has a section entitled “Error Costs: The False Positive/ Negative Debate.” A frustration for me in discussing the error cost issue with respect to antitrust policy is that many people do not seem [...

Kevin Murphy models the stimulus–and the results aren’t pretty

Posted on January 20, 2009
A great video from the University of Chicago here with comments from John Huizinga, Kevin Murphy and Robert Lucas. John Huizinga also wonders if we’re calculating the costs. Robert Lucas is skeptical. But Kevin Murphy’s discussion is (not surprisingly) worth the price of admission (I only wish the video showed the slides)...

Tom Smith Gets Error Costs

Posted on January 20, 2009
Here he is making the very basic but critical point while responding to Delong’s critique of classic liberalism: DeLong explains why classical liberalism/libertarianism is wrong. I agree with much of what he says. The problem is, and it’s a very basic mistake and I don’t understand why people keep making it, is that just [...

Microsoft Again. Really? Why?

Posted on January 20, 2009
DG Comp is after Microsoft. Again. Here is the EU’s press release which states the obvious about the basis of the Statement of Objections : the Commission’s decision in the Windows Media Player decision renders illegal virtually any tie by a firm with a “dominant” share under EU law...

The heart of the matter

Posted on January 19, 2009
David Evans gets to the heart of the matter: The problem that we now face involves fixing many different aspects of our financial system?from incentive systems that encouraged excessive risk taking (do we really believe bankers are innately more greedy than anyone else?), to financial engineers who didn?t think through the consequences of their innovations, to [...

What One Article Should Obama Read Tonight?

Posted on January 19, 2009
Imagine what must be going through President-elect Barack Obama’s head today. Tomorrow he begins what must be the most stressful job on the planet (just look at before-and-after pictures of Presidents Clinton and Bush, both of whom appeared to age decades in only eight years)...

Kiesling on Sunstein, OIRA and Nudging

Posted on January 17, 2009
A post that everybody should read over at Knowledge Problem in which Lynne Kiesling moves from behavioral economics to the design of fixed price default contracts in electricity markets to a Hayekian critique of the Sunstein-Thaler libertarian paternalist program to the following closing paragraph: In devising OIRA policy I?d like to hear Sunstein invoke another of [...

Should the Supreme Court Grant Cert in Rambus (Revisited, and Cross-Posted at Patently-O)

Posted on January 16, 2009
[Rutgers Professor Michael Carrier recently posted as a guest at Patently-O arguing in favor of the FTC’s position in Rambus and the Supreme Court granting certiorari. I thought Professor Crouch might be interested in sharing with his readers a different perspective on the merits of the FTC’s petition for cert in Rambus sketched out in [...

Three from Brad DeLong

Posted on January 15, 2009
Yesterday I criticized Brad DeLong for, essentially, acting like a child. Today I want to draw attention to three posts from Brad DeLong–in none of which does he act like a child. The first is this post, correcting his mistaken ad hominem attack on Glen Weyl...

More (less) on the costs of stimulus

Posted on January 15, 2009
This is what I’m talking about in my last post: We can continue to debate the size and nature of the stimulus, of course, but roughly $800bn seems right and the mix of spending and tax cuts currently proposed also makes sense. Yeah, roughly $800,000,000,000, give or take a few zeros...

Disgorgement and Damages in Ovation

Posted on January 15, 2009
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a blog discussing the FTC?s complaint against Ovation. One of the interesting factors of that complaint was the FTC?s decision to seek disgorgement of profits allegedly improperly gained as a result of the challenged acquisition...

Some sense on stimulus

Posted on January 13, 2009
Apparently to some people, intellectual disagreements are intolerable, and those who disagree intellectually can only be the most pathetic, worthless thing on the planet: Republican hacks (of the “ethics-free” variety). I’m talking about Brad DeLong here...

What Influence Will the Section 2 Report Have? The Role of Political Ideology

Posted on January 12, 2009
There has been a great deal of speculation and discussion in this blog and around the antitrust community regarding what will happen with the DOJ Section 2 Report. Rightly so. It is a document with the potential to influence both agency monopolization enforcement decisions, international antitrust enforcement, and U...

Epstein on the Economics of Fault in Contract Law

Posted on January 12, 2009
A new paper from Richard Epstein came across my inbox via SSRN this morning, The Many Faces of Fault in Contract Law: Or How to Do Economics Right, Without Really Trying? Here’s the abstract: Modern law often rests on the assumption that a uniform cost/benefit formula is the proper way to determine fault in ordinary contract [...

500!

Posted on January 12, 2009
So sometime between January 17th, 2006 and this post, I managed to accumulate 500 blog posts here at Truth on the Market. Not bad. Not quite at par with our recently-tenured David Hoffman’s 550 or so, but more than also recently tenured Bill Henderson’s 200...

Whole Foods Remand Update

Posted on January 10, 2009
From the Blog of Legal Times: Yesterday, Friedman sided with the FTC?s interpretation of the D.C. Circuit?s three-way opinion. He will limit his role on remand, which is exactly what lawyers for the FTC said the D.C. Circuit wanted. The Whole Foods lawyers?including Dechert partners Paul Friedman (not the judge) and Paul Denis?urged Friedman to revisit [...

Some Links

Posted on January 08, 2009
Economist Philip Cook on alcohol control policy at the Volokh Conspiracy Alex Tabarrok on President-Elect Obama’s visit to George Mason Cass Sunstein to head OIRA (is this evidence that I was wrong that the Obama regulatory regime will be built upon an intellectual platform of behavioral law and economics?) Manfred Gabriel explains Hart-Scott-Rodino Tom Smith (the most entertaining law [...

Taking On Lebron: What’s the Impact of a Gold Medal Performance?

Posted on January 08, 2009
Stories like this one suggest that winning Olympic gold in Beijing have catapulted team members into better seasons. Here’s a quote from Lebron James: ?To win the gold just uplifted all of us into this season. A lot of people were wondering if we?d hit a wall because we played in the Olympics...

The Law Market

Posted on January 06, 2009
The Law Market, Larry Ribstein’s new and important book with Erin O’Hara looks great and is available here from Oxford University Press. The book description from the website sets the stage: Today, a California resident can incorporate her shipping business in Delaware, register her ships in Panama, hire her employees from Hong Kong, place her earnings [...

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