Corporate & Securities Law

Professor Werner Z. Hirsch (1920-2009)

Posted on September 08, 2009
I worked for Professor Hirsch as a graduate student working my way through the economics and law programs at UCLA.  We wrote an article together on the law and economics of regulatory takings before the antitrust bug had taken hold of me.  I’ve still got a draft somewhere, I think...

Zingales on Capitalism After the Crisis

Posted on September 08, 2009
A very, very good essay. The whole thing is very much worth reading.  I suspect the concluding three paragraphs will get the most attention: We thus stand at a crossroads for American capitalism. One path would channel popular rage into political support for some genuinely pro-market reforms, even if they do not serve the interests of large [...

Shouldn’t I Just Be Happy My Name is Spelled Correctly?

Posted on September 08, 2009
I’m not generally a big fan of blogging to complain about law reviews or the way that my work has been interpreted by others.  I’m generally of the view that the risk of having my work misinterpreted within a reasonable range is my own to bear, and that if it happens, it’s probably due to [...

Zywicki on the Consumer Financial Protection Agency on Reason TV

Posted on September 02, 2009
Available here.

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Antitrust, Multi-Dimensional Competition, and Innovation: Do We Have an Antitrust-Relevant Theory of Competition Now?

Posted on September 02, 2009
My essay on economics, innovation, and antitrust, forthcoming in Manne & Wright’s forthcoming volume on Regulating Innovation: Competition Policy and Patent Law Under Certainty (introductory chapter available here), is now available on SSRN...

Kobayashi and Wright on Antitrust Aspects of Intellectual Property and Standard Setting

Posted on September 02, 2009
[REPOSTED BECAUSE SSRN LINK INACTIVE EARLIER, CHAPTER IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD] Bruce Kobayashi and I have posted our forthcoming chapter, Intellectual Property and Standard Setting,  in the forthcoming ABA Antitrust Section Handbook on the Antitrust Aspects of Standard Setting...

Pioneers of Law and Economics — Available Now

Posted on September 01, 2009
Pioneers of Law and Economics, a volume I edited alongside my colleague Lloyd Cohen, is now available at the Elgar Website.   I’m very happy with how the book came out in large part because of the fantastic group of contributors who agreed to take on chapters, including:  Harold Demsetz, Nuno Garoupa and Fernando Gomez-Pomar, Mark [...

International Signals: The Political Dimension of International Competition Law Harmonization

Posted on August 31, 2009
Seth Weinberger and I have a new article up at SSRN injecting some IR theory into the debate over international antitrust law.   Abstract: The article, written jointly by a law professor and political science professor, endeavors to explain why the United States is particularly resistant to various efforts at international harmonization of antitrust law...

Regulating Innovation: Competition Policy and Patent Law Under Uncertainty

Posted on August 28, 2009
Later this year Josh and I have an edited volume with the above title coming out with Cambridge University Press.  The list of contributors is phenomenal, including: Bob Cooter Vincenzo Denicolo Richard Epstein Luigi Franzoni Damien Geradin Keith Hylton Marco Iansiti Scott Kieff Bruce Kobayashi Haizhen Lee Stan Leibowitz Mark Lemley Doug Lichtman Steve Margolis Mike Meurer Adam Mossoff Greg Richards Greg Sidak Henry Smith Dan Spulber David Teece Josh Wright Our introductory essay, available here, discusses the [...

Some Links

Posted on August 27, 2009
Alex Tabarrok reviews economic growth textbooks and recommends this one Ribstein on the proxy access battles Private antitrust litigation is increasing quickly (picture here) — I’m setting the over/under for 2010 at 1600 cases Steve Salop on the appropriate Section 2 rule of reason standard for refusal to deal and price squeezes by unregulated, vertically integrated monopolists Some economics [...

Armen Alchian, Harold Demsetz and Ben Klein Should Win the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics

Posted on August 25, 2009
With the start of the school year comes another fall tradition here at TOTM: Nobel speculation.  More specifically, every fall I yell from the rooftops that some combination of Armen Alchian, Harold Demsetz and Ben Klein should win the award.  In 2006, I argued that the UCLA trio outperformed the more conventionally wise trio of [...

Kobayashi and Wright on Antitrust Issues in Intellectual Property & Standard Setting

Posted on August 25, 2009
Bruce Kobayashi and I have posted our forthcoming chapter, Intellectual Property and Standard Setting,  in the forthcoming ABA Antitrust Section Handbook on the Antitrust Aspects of Standard Setting.  It offers an analytical overview of the antitrust issues involving intellectual property and standard setting including, but not limited to, patent holdup, royalty stacking, refusals to license, [...

Another Way DOJ Might Pursue “Vigorous Antitrust Enforcement in This Challenging Era”

Posted on August 24, 2009
DOJ’s top antitrust enforcer Christine Varney had hardly gotten settled in her office before she repudiated the existing DOJ guidelines on policing single-firm conduct. In the spirit of Rahm Emanuel’s famous “never let a serious crisis go to waste” directive, Ms...

Jones v. Harris and Some Ramblings on Burdens of Proof, Empirical Evidence, and Behavioral Law and Economics

Posted on August 21, 2009
Much has been made about the importance of Jones v. Harris as a battle in the ongoing war between behavioral economics  and rational choice/neoclassical framework (see, e.g. the NYT).   If the case if to be about the appropriate economic methodology or model for assessing legal questions, it is definitely an interesting turn to have Judge [...

Results Not Typical

Posted on August 21, 2009
Apparently, under the proposed changes to the FTC advertising guidelines, a “results not typical” disclaimer for consumer endorsements representing a non-typical experience will no longer be sufficient on the grounds that those types of disclaimers have not been sufficient in deterring deception...

An Addendum on Jones v. Harris in Response to Professor Birdthistle: Ex Ante Competition, Cognitive Biases and Behavioral Economics

Posted on August 21, 2009
Professor Birdthistle has a very thoughtful reply to my earlier post over at the Conglomerate on Jones v. Harris and behavioral economics.  I thank Professor Birdthistle for his reply.  I’ve learned a great deal about Jones v. Harris from reading his posts at the Conglomerate and have no doubt that I’ll learn more from this [...

The optimal level of risk is not zero

Posted on August 19, 2009
I have said it before and I’ll say it again: All of this hand wringing over executive compensation seems to exist in a parallel world where corporate executives have no risk aversion, where there is no real competition for managerial talent, and where firms can only take on too much–never too little–risk...

BU Antitrust Conference Honoring Professor Joseph Brodley’s Retirement

Posted on August 19, 2009
Professor Joe Brodley, after a long and distinguished career as an antitrust scholar, retired at the end of the Spring 2009 semester. Boston University Law School will host a symposium honoring Joe?s contributions to Antitrust on September 18, 2009. The Boston University Law Review will publish the contributions...

Thaler’s Unsound Argument About the Public Insurance Option

Posted on August 19, 2009
University of Chicago economist (and behavioralist doyen) Richard Thaler thinks “the question of whether a ‘public option’ should be part of the health care solution” is just “one big distraction.” In Sunday’s New York Times, Thaler argues that the debate over the public option is a “red herring” if, as President Obama insists, the [...

Some Links …

Posted on August 18, 2009
There was a lot of backdating … yawn… oh, and Brett Favre is coming back The WSJ editorial page thinks the liberal boycotts of Whole Foods in response to CEO John Mackey’s op-ed on health care reform won’t have any real effects because because “real protest would require the store’s hyperprogressive customers to withdraw forever from [...

The New Issue of Antitrust Source

Posted on August 14, 2009
Is available here. In this issue Chris Sagers considers the future of Section 1 in light of the Supreme Court’s possible action in American Needle. Continuing our focus on China, this issue features an article by Nate Bush that examines merger enforcement activity under that country’s year-old Antimonopoly Law...

Questioning the UK Competition Commission Ombudsman Plan

Posted on August 12, 2009
In April 2008, the UK Competition Commission issued its Final Report culminating from its grocery sector inquiry.  Along with supermarket concentration, the concern that emerges out of that Report is that supermarkets will use their power to negotiate sharp deals with suppliers...

EU Intel Fines Attract Rebuke

Posted on August 11, 2009
I’ve criticized the European Commission’s antitrust attack against Intel here and the resulting $1.44 billion fine.  Now the EU is drawing fire for allegedly burying testimony, or at least failing to record it in a satisfactory manner, from Dell that it chose Intel’s chips not because of the coercive force of any of Intel’s rebates [...

Antitrust Anachronism? Randy Picker on the Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal

Posted on August 09, 2009
I recently commented on Gordon Crovitz’s WSJ column on the Microsoft-Yahoo deal arguing that antitrust was simply too cumbersome to deal competition issues in dynamic markets like search.  A short version of my take was that these concerns are often overstated in the areas of cartels and even sometimes in merger enforcement — but have [...

FTC Office Policy and Planning Fights for Competition in the Dental Services Market

Posted on August 07, 2009
Having just had four wisdom teeth pulled this morning at age 32, about ten years after the dentist first recommended it, the dental services market is on my (anesthesia fogged) mind this afternoon.  But it reminded me of a post I wanted to write highlighting the efforts of the FTC Office of Policy and Planning [...

Trends in Protectionism

Posted on August 06, 2009
Here’s a troubling paragraph from Chad Bown’s WSJ op-ed: The count of newly imposed protectionist policies like antidumping duties and other ?safeguard? measures increased by 31% in the first half of 2009 relative to the same period one year ago, which itself is not an alarming number...

The EU’s Bass Ackward Approach to Evaluating Mergers

Posted on August 04, 2009
As American antitrust regulators hurdle headlong toward a Europeanized (i.e., competitor-focused) antitrust, I do hope they will at least avoid the tack the EU has taken in evaluating Lufthansa’s proposed takeover of Austrian Airlines. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that EU Antitrust Chief Neelie Kroes has directed her subordinates to draft a “conditional [...

TOTM Makes Top 100 Blogs for Law Students

Posted on August 04, 2009
You heard it here first.

Antitrust, Obsolescence and the “New Economy” (Again)

Posted on August 04, 2009
Gordon Crovitz (WSJ) plays the new economy card on antitrust.  Its a familiar wrap for those in the antitrust community that hit its peak in the original Microsoft days with virtually every competition policy scholar and commentator chiming in with an opinion about whether the internet and network effects and so forth rendered antitrust obsolete...

FTC on the CFPA

Posted on August 03, 2009
Commissioners Rosch and Kovacic of the Federal Trade Commission come out against the proposed CFPA.  Both emphasize the risk of shifting consumer protection authority away from an agency with substantial expertise in the area (including the Bureau of Economics which has an excellent record of reports and publications in this area) to an unproven agency...

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