Shows / Truth on the Market
Episodes
- Truth on the Market
The Price of Playing Fair: How Charging Everyone the Same Can Leave Consumers Worse Off
Imagine you have a business that earns zero economic profit. It exactly covers its costs, including the return needed to attract investors, but nothing more…
- Truth on the Market
The New (Mexico) Math: Multiply the Violations and Never Mind the Harm
The big news in the competition-plus space—where competition policy meets broader policy concerns—isn’t an antitrust matter at all…
- Truth on the Market
The View from Southeast Asia: A TOTM Q&A with Hee Eun Kim
Hee Eun Kim, can you tell us a bit about yourself and what your work focuses on? I am a member of Baker McKenzie’s antitrust and competition team in the…
- Truth on the Market
The EU’s Fair-Weather Cloud Partnership
The European Union (EU) is offering its allies a foothold in its cloud market—with little room to move. They could own a cloud business, provided EU…
- Truth on the Market
Why Corner Post’s Merchant Victory May Not Ring Up Savings
Merchants persuaded a federal appeals court to throw out the Federal Reserve’s debit-card fee cap. They might want to hold the applause until they see…
- Truth on the Market
The Halloween Effect and the Premature Burial of Efficient Markets
Every October, financial journalism performs a small act of necromancy. Out comes the “Halloween effect,” the finding that stocks tend to earn…
- Truth on the Market
‘Contemporary Law and Economics,’ by Adam Chilton, Joshua C. Macey & Mila Versteeg
What does it mean to be a law & economics (L&E) scholar? It can’t require a Ph.D. in economics. Richard Posner doesn’t have one. He didn’t…
- Truth on the Market
Old Insurance Wisdom for New AI Risks
Artificial intelligence (AI) may be new to the insurance market, but uncertainty is an old customer. Insurers have spent centuries figuring out how to price…
- Truth on the Market
The FCC’s Public Interest in Your Personnel Files
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licenses television stations. Does that make it Disney’s human resources department? The agency seems to…
- Truth on the Market
How to Profit From a Cartel Without Joining One
Adam Smith warned that people in the same trade rarely meet without the conversation turning to a scheme to raise prices. Antitrust enforcers on both sides of…
- Truth on the Market
Fin-Syn Is a Rerun Washington Should Skip
Some of Hollywood’s most high-powered producers and agents have a pitch for Washington. Make streaming services spend half their original-content budgets…
- Truth on the Market
Every Click You Make: Article 6(5)’s Search for a Limiting Principle
When does a “directions” button become a competition-law violation? When it points to Google Maps, according to the European Commission. A law…
- Truth on the Market
Brussels Rules Without the Brussels Perks
Brussels’ latest competition guidelines should probably come with a warning label. Countries borrowing them risk importing dubious economics, remedies…
- Truth on the Market
‘The Value of the Ability to Deal with Disequilibria,’ by Theodore Schultz
The most valuable skill in the age of artificial intelligence (AI) may not be coding, prompt engineering, or any of the other competencies appearing in job…
- Truth on the Market
We Measured Europe’s Browser Revolution. Bring a Magnifying Glass.
Europe’s browser revolution appears to have left most browsers exactly where it found them. The European Commission is celebrating a “surge&rdquo…
- Truth on the Market
Doom, Meet Duty: AI’s Warnings Come With Legal Baggage
Predicting the end of humanity is one way to get a headline. For artificial intelligence (AI) developers, it may also be one way to hand a future plaintiff…
- Truth on the Market
A Nobel Prize for Thinking Ahead: Hall and Woodford’s Great Expectations
Suppose you get a $1,000 payment. How much do you spend? Before answering, we’d want to know a few things: Is this a one-time payment? The first of many?…
- Truth on the Market
The World Wants Cures. America Gets the Check.
Everyone wants the next medical breakthrough. Few want the bill. The United States pays a disproportionate share of the cost of pharmaceutical innovation…
- Truth on the Market
Antitrust at the Agencies: Pour One Out for Southern Glazer’s
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has settled a wine-and-spirits case, and its press release reads like a victory toast. The two commissioners who approved…
- Truth on the Market
AI Insurance and the Backstop Reflex: A Policy for Every Risk, a Taxpayer for Every Loss
Washington has a standard playbook when it comes to emerging commercial risks: Make companies buy insurance coverage, then put taxpayers behind the losses…
- Truth on the Market
Beyond Tariffs: Free Trade and the Friends-and-Family Plan
A trade deal can lower tariffs and yet still leave the hardest barriers untouched. The shipment clears customs, but the supplier cannot get a license, bid for…
- Truth on the Market
Two Years, 57 Pages, No Merger: Amazon, Anthropic, and Brazil’s Filing Problem
The wave of artificial intelligence (AI) partnerships and “acqui-hires”—deals to acquire a company’s talent—has reached Brazil…
- Truth on the Market
Licensed to Wait: The High Cost of Spectrum Delay
America’s wireless future is on hold, pending another study. Federal agencies control much of the spectrum needed to build it—and the process for…
- Truth on the Market
Proof of Age, Leap of Faith: The EU KIDS Act’s Security Gamble
The European Commission’s proposed EU KIDS Act would bar children under 15 from creating or using accounts on certain social-networking and video-sharing…
- Truth on the Market
Fraud, Platforms, and the Art of Getting Ahead of Yourself
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wants to stop impersonation scams. Fair enough. But calling a new regulatory venture an “update” doesn’t…
- Truth on the Market
The Garden State’s War on the Good Deal
New Jersey lawmakers have found a way to spare small grocers the sting of missing out on a discount: make suppliers think twice about offering one to anybody…
- Truth on the Market
California’s COMPETE Act: May the Best Firm Lose
Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed Assembly Bill 1776, the so-called COMPETE Act, making California the first state to add a general prohibition on anticompetitive…
- Truth on the Market
No Country for Young Posters: Social Media Bans Outrun the Evidence
Governments around the world are rushing to address the youth mental health crisis, with social media squarely in their sights. From Capitol Hill to Paris to…
- Truth on the Market
Pump and Circumstance: The Politics of Italy’s Fuel-Price Caps
The Italian government is claiming a victory at the pump. Eni, the country’s largest oil company, has announced a 30-day cap on retail fuel prices…
- Truth on the Market
BEAD’s Second Act: The Future Is Pending Approval
The road to rural access to AI-enabled services runs through the permit office. Chips, data centers, and electricity get the attention, but delivering AI to a…
- Truth on the Market
The Case of the Missing Sale: The FTC’s Personalized-Pricing Blind Spot
Suppose a retailer charges $10 for a service. One customer values it at $11 and buys it. Another values it at $8 and walks away. The retailer sends the second…
- Truth on the Market
The Rivals Antitrust Can’t See
The next serious competitor may be waiting for a license, or working on a product nobody has seen yet. Neither shows up in today’s market-share figures…
- Truth on the Market
‘The Economics of the Marriage Contract: Theories and Evidence,’ by Niko Matouschek and Imran Rasul
Marriage is a natural subject for law & economics scholars. From Gary Becker’s “A Treatise on the Family” (1981) to Margaret Brinig’s…
- Truth on the Market
The EPA Takes Its Thumb Off the Power Switch
Power-plant rules do more than regulate pollution. They can also regulate competitors out of the market. That is the overlooked significance of the…
- Truth on the Market
Tap Your Own Brakes: AI Safety and Antitrust
Frontier artificial-intelligence (AI) labs may have good reasons to tap the brakes. The antitrust question begins when they all reach for the same pedal…
- Truth on the Market
Brussels Writes the Answer Key
Ask Brussels what ChatGPT is, and you get two answers. Under the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act), the European Union regulates it as artificial…
- Truth on the Market
The DMA’s Magic Words and Missing Off Switch
The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) depends on two terms that lawmakers never defined. “Fairness” and “contestability&rdquo…
- Truth on the Market
The Right-Answer Machine: Who Decides What Chatbots Should Say?
The trouble with chatbots is right there in the name: They talk. When that talk contributes to harm, policymakers face a deceptively difficult question. Should…
- Truth on the Market
Move Slow and Collude: The Antitrust Problem With Pacing AI
The frontier AI race’s latest safety proposal would have the leading contenders agree on how fast to run. Antitrust law has a less flattering name for…
- Truth on the Market
Checkout Error: A Bad Grocery Plan Meets a Weak Antitrust Case
I’ve criticized plenty of private antitrust cases. This may be the first in which the plaintiffs sued to stop a genuinely bad idea—and I still…
- Truth on the Market
Prime Targets: Amazon, No-Poach Rules, and the Limits of Antitrust
The State of New Jersey’s antitrust case against Amazon begins with a serious allegation: that Amazon restricted drivers from moving among competing…
- Truth on the Market
All-Inclusive Antitrust: Europe’s New Route to Merger Prohibition
Booking.com wanted to become a one-stop shop for a traveler’s entire journey. European regulators saw a different itinerary: a one-way trip to deeper…
- Truth on the Market
Rate Expectations: Apple and the New Price Regulators
Competition policy is supposed to protect the competitive process, not do double-duty as price regulation. Yet the line between the two appears to be blurring…
- Truth on the Market
One AI, Two Rulebooks: Brussels’ ChatGPT Conundrum
ChatGPT can draft a memo, plan a trip, and search the web. As of Aug. 31, it can add another line to its regulatory résumé: The European…
- Truth on the Market
‘Incomplete Contracts and the Theory of Contract Design,’ by Robert Scott and George Triantis
Economists and lawyers know that almost every contract is incomplete. Contracts routinely omit or leave undefined important terms, and they rarely anticipate…
- Truth on the Market
Who, Exactly, Does New York City’s Delivery Protection Act Protect?
New York City has found an unlikely culprit for unsafe deliveries: the name on a driver’s paycheck. Its proposed cure would force Amazon to bring…
- Truth on the Market
No Free Ride: Uber’s African Retreat
First, “Uber” became a verb. Now, in parts of Africa, it is becoming past tense. The company’s withdrawal from Nigeria and Uganda complicates…
- Truth on the Market
Reserve Judgment: The FTC Takes on Amazon’s Ad Auctions
The price to beat in Amazon’s advertising auctions may not have come from another advertiser at all, according to a lawsuit filed Aug. 31 by the Federal…
- Truth on the Market
Certified Uncertain: Why AI Safety Needs Assurance Tests, Not Permission Slips
OpenAI put tens of thousands of artificial-intelligence (AI) agents through a safety test and told them to work alone. Instead, some found one another…
- Truth on the Market
Competing Too Well: Europe’s New Guide to Dominance
Brussels has finally given Article 102 an instruction manual. Issued Sept. 3, the European Commission’s first comprehensive Guidelines on exclusionary…
- Truth on the Market
Nothing Runs Like a Deere You Can Repair
Farmers have won the right to repair—at least, if they own John Deere equipment. In July, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a settlement…
- Truth on the Market
Location, Location, Litigation: The Antitrust Fight Over Private Listings
In the late 1800s, real estate agents gathered at local associations to exchange information about the homes they were trying to sell. The intuitive logic was…
- Truth on the Market
Your Price May Vary: The FTC’s Personalized-Pricing Puzzle
A price that knows your name may be creepy. It may also be a bargain. That ambiguity sits at the heart of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) proposed…
- Truth on the Market
‘The Use of Knowledge in Society,’ by Friedrich A. Hayek
The wealth and technological sophistication of modern society are readily apparent. Less visible, but no less remarkable, is its ability to coordinate the…
- Truth on the Market
Fine Print for Every Price: The FTC’s One-Size-Fits-All Guidance
My first post at Truth on the Market—where I called myself a “Refugee from the FTC”—briefly discussed an advance notice of proposed…
- Truth on the Market
A Fee Too Far: Merchants, Surcharges, and the War on Plastic
Earlier this summer, my family took a vacation to Ocean City, Maryland, where the boardwalk offered ice cream, souvenirs, and an unexpected lesson in payment…
- Truth on the Market
Four Patents and a Time Machine: CareFirst and the Perils of Backdated Antitrust
Four patents can carry a lot of antitrust baggage—especially when they come tucked inside a portfolio of more than 500. In CareFirst of Maryland v…
- Truth on the Market
‘Deliberation as Self-Discovery and Institutions for Political Speech,’ by Catherine Hafer and Dimitri Landa
The We Are What We Read series is, in part, about what defines the field of law & economics. The field’s natural home lies in applications that are…
- Truth on the Market
Premium, Regular, or Collusive? Brazil’s Aprix Case Tests Algorithmic Pricing
Few antitrust investigations find their theory of harm laid out in the target’s sales brochure. Brazil’s investigation of Aprix, a startup that…
- Truth on the Market
Fiber Freeze: How Maple Grove Made a Cable Franchise the Price of Broadband
The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Build America Agenda rests on a simple premise: Stop making it so hard to build. Federal and state…