Regulated Monopolies - Publications - Faculty & Research

Research Summary

Overview

Professor Sawyer’s research focuses on U.S. political economy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, concentrating on the development of competition policy and the administrative state. While the conventional history of U.S. competition policy portrays the... View Details

April 2020 (Revised April 2023)
Case

TransDigm in 2017: The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning?

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher

TransDigm was a highly acquisitive company that manufactured a wide range of highly engineered aerospace parts for both military and commercial customers. Over the ten years ending in 2016, its stock price had increased ten times, and both EBITDA and revenues had grown... View Details

Citation

Educators

Purchase

04 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: January 4

expectations can be formed, which correspond to two different types of users-sophisticated and unsophisticated. Only sophisticated users adjust their expectations in response to platforms' price changes. We study the effect of the fraction of sophisticated users on... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

25 Nov 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Standard-Essential Patents

Keywords: by Josh Lerner & Jean Tirole; Legal Services

30 May 2019
Working Paper Summaries

US Antitrust Law and Policy in Historical Perspective

Keywords: by Laura Phillips Sawyer; Education

January 11, 2024
Article

Understanding the Tradeoffs of the Amazon Antitrust Case

By: Chiara Farronato, Andrey Fradkin, Andrei Hagiu and Dionne Lomax

Regulators in the United States and Europe have been taking on Big Tech, challenging what they say are the companies’ anti-competitive and predatory strategies that harm consumers and third-party users of their platforms. This article examines the FTC’s case against... View Details

Keywords: Monopoly; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Market Design; Lawsuits and Litigation

Citation

Read Now

18 Feb 2009
First Look

First Look: February 18, 2009

for each firm in the duopoly medium to bundle more ads and earn greater total profits than the rival firm in the monopoly medium. Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting Authors:Lisa D. Ordonez,... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

06 Dec 2017
What Do You Think?

Is It Time To Break Up Amazon, Apple, Facebook, or Google?

Google was a monopoly and if so, should it be regulated or broken up. His answer: ‘Our product is free to the consumer. We welcome any competitors.’” Questions were raised about how a platform-based... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Technology; Web Services

18 Jul 2023
Research & Ideas

Will Global Demand for Oil Peak This Decade?

Is the globe’s thirst for oil finally topping out? A major international energy watcher says yes, predicting last month that demand for global oil for transport will peak around 2026, plateau for all uses by 2028, and possibly hit a zenith by the end of the decade.... View Details

Keywords: by Alvin Powell, Harvard Gazette; Energy; Industrial Products; Auto; Green Technology

Web

2023 Reunion Presentations - Alumni

management be trusted to self-regulate, or will regulators or other stakeholders need to play a more significant role to address a growing range of harms? Participants left with an understanding of how the business model creates... View Details

Web

Serving the Public Interest Through Competition: British Railroads - Railroads and the Transformation of Capitalism | Harvard Business School

mergers, Parliament began to regulate the level of capital and the number of acquisitions permitted. William Gladstone, political leader and Christian socialist philosopher, believed the state had moral responsibilities to the public... View Details

31 Aug 2021
Book

Feeling Powerless at Work? Time to Agitate, Innovate, and Orchestrate

of the same resource can increase a person’s power. Unions are one instance of this strategy; monopolies are another more extreme example—and can be problematic, the authors note. To weaken the power that others parties have on them,... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

04 Mar 2019
What Do You Think?

What’s the Antidote to Surveillance Capitalism?

actions. Some of the media (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google) they employ, however, represent a threat of monopoly that should be addressed by the very governments that, ironically, could turn big data against us. So say... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Advertising; Consumer Products

21 Feb 2005
Op-Ed

Is Business Management a Profession?

practice; a commitment to use specialized knowledge for the public good, and a renunciation of the goal of profit maximization, in return for professional autonomy and monopoly power; a code of ethics, with provisions for monitoring... View Details

Keywords: by Rakesh Khurana, Nitin Nohria & Daniel Penrice

25 Jan 2010
Research & Ideas

A Macroeconomic View of the Current Economy

asset that you can use to buy things, right now. It's the ultimate form of liquidity. But another thing that's important about money is that its supply is largely controlled by the government. Depending on which type of money supply you look at, the government has... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

25 Aug 2009
First Look

First Look: August 25

pooling equilibria exist becomes smaller, and firms are more likely to anger consumers. Regulation can increase welfare, for example, through fines (even if there are no changes in prices). We illustrate these gains in a View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

13 Jul 2009
Research & Ideas

Diagnosing the Public Health Care Alternative

onto patients. To work, a public plan must be regulated and have independent governance, and, if it is well-designed, it might inspire competition from private insurers—leading to better value for patients. Regina E. Herzlinger, The Nancy... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Health

01 Sep 2018
News

Ask the Expert: Delivering the Goods

private companies, the USPS has to have even its best ideas reviewed by regulators and contested by competitors. But inevitably making tough choices about technology to create new services has to be market-driven, in spite of the... View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint

01 Apr 1996
News

Stasis and Turmoil: HBS Research for the Real World

communications industry has entailed the gradual removal of protected monopolies and rate-of-return regulation. Yet, at the same time, new government policies have been adopted to require open access and nondiscriminatory pricing in areas... View Details

23 Jun 2003
Research & Ideas

Historically Speaking: A Roundtable at HBS

suppliers in particular. Intel became a near monopoly in microprocessors, and Microsoft, which provided the operating system, is probably the most powerful regulated monopoly... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Aisner

Publications