The Archives

The collection of all scholarly commentary on law, economics, and more

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Web Seminar: Antitrust Economics 101

I’ll be teaching an interactive web seminar on basic microeconomic concepts that form the basis of antitrust analysis through Competition Policy International’s Learning Center on three consecutive Wednesdays: May 13, 20, and 27th. CLE credit is available for practicing lawyers. Though I think the material will be useful for antitrust lawyers, law students interested in ... Web Seminar: Antitrust Economics 101

Mossoff on the Rise and Fall of the Sewing Machine Patent Thicket

My colleague Adam Mossoff is blogging over at the Volokh Conspiracy on his fascinating paper, A Stitch in Time: The Rise and Fall of the Sewing Machine Patent Thicket. Here’s an excerpt from the first post: The debate centers on whether patent thicket theory accurately explains or predicts such problems in practice, and the empirical ... Mossoff on the Rise and Fall of the Sewing Machine Patent Thicket

What does Tyler know about law and economics, anyway?

Over at Crooked Timber, Tyler Cowen comments on Steve Teles’ book on conservative legal movements.  I never get tired of plugging Steve’s book (as he knows), so I’ll do it again here:  It’s a great book, a riveting read, and instructive, to boot.  Buy a copy today! Tyler comments (among a series of comments in ... What does Tyler know about law and economics, anyway?

Ribstein on Business, Film and Law

Wrapping up what looks like a very interesting conference at the University of Illinois on the interaction between business, film, and law, Larry Ribstein shares some thoughts in an excellent post.  Readers of Ideoblog will be familiar with Professor Ribstein’s take on how artists’ negative views of capitalists find their way into film. In summing ... Ribstein on Business, Film and Law

Some Reading

Solow reviews Posner on the financial crisis Dave Hoffman has an excellent post summarizing the consumer bankruptcy debate in empirical legal scholarship in a series of recent papers between Rafael Pardo and a group including Bob Lawless, Angela K. Littwin, Katherine M. Porter, John Pottow, Deborah Thorne, and Elizabeth Warren Why is college tuition rising? ... Some Reading

"We're Kinda Worried About the Monopoly Thing"

That’s from Firefox chief software architect Mike Connor in an interview with PCPro.  Here’s an excerpt suggesting that Mozilla fears that its recent success might lead to antitrust liability in the United States or elsewhere: Firefox has only just tipped past the 20% mark in worldwide browser market share, and is still a long way ... "We're Kinda Worried About the Monopoly Thing"

Weekend Reading

Mike Sykuta on GM and Transaction Cost Economics (O&M) Peter Klein on Antitrust and the Theory of the Firm (again, O&M) John Pfaff continues his series on evidence-based empirical work (at Prawfs) Who Games SSRN Download Counts? Guido Imbens (from whom I took econometrics at UCLA) defends randomized experiments in development economics against the critics ... Weekend Reading

Glaxo/Pfizer HIV Drug Collaboration

There’s an interesting story in the WSJ about a merger between the HIV-drug businesses at Glaxo and Pfizer.  Some details from the story: Examples of cooperation among drug giants are unusual — Pfizer and Glaxo are the world’s top two drug companies by sales, respectively — since big pharmaceutical companies compete to sell products, attract ... Glaxo/Pfizer HIV Drug Collaboration

Randy Picker on the Google Book Settlement

Randy Picker has posted The Google Book Settlement: A New Orphan Works Monopoly? to SSRN.  I have not been following the antitrust issues related to the settlement as closely as I should be and so I’m really looking forward to reading this.  Here is the abstract: This paper considers the proposed settlement agreement between Google ... Randy Picker on the Google Book Settlement

Call for Papers: FTC/Northwestern University Second Annual Microeconomics Conference

The Federal Trade Commission and the Searle Center at Northwestern are hosting the second annual Microeconomics Conference.  The conference will take place on November 19th and 20th at the FTC.  Here’s the conference announcement and call for papers: The Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Economics, Northwestern University’s Searle Center on Law, Regulation and Economic Growth, ... Call for Papers: FTC/Northwestern University Second Annual Microeconomics Conference

"Goldman reports $1.8 billion profit"

Cnn.com tells us the good news that “Goldman reports $1.8 billion profit,” but the totality of the information in the cnn.com article strikes me as mildly curious. While announcing that “Goldman reports $1.8 billion profit,” the article points out that Goldman needed $10 B in TARP funds only a few months ago.  Yet now Goldman is ... "Goldman reports $1.8 billion profit"

GMU/Microsoft Conference on the Law & Economics of Innovation

UPDATE 3:  It just keeps getting better.  Now we’ve added Mike Baye, formerly Director of the Bureau of Economics at the FTC, now returned to his post at Indiana.  He’ll be moderating and I’m sure commenting on many of the papers.  UPDATE 2: And now Susan DeSanti, newly-appointed Director of the Office of Policy and ... GMU/Microsoft Conference on the Law & Economics of Innovation