Publications

13 Jul 2009
Research & Ideas

Diagnosing the Public Health Care Alternative

the monopoly power of Medicare and Medicaid enable them to underpay providers by an estimated $90 billion, sums made up by private insurers. But if the market were entirely composed of public insurers, who would take up the slack? The... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Health

September 2001
Background Note

Note on Application of the Antitrust Laws to the New Economy: An Analysis of United States v. Microsoft Corporation

Analyzes the 1991 decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in the seminal New Economy antitrust case United States vs. Microsoft Corp., 253 F.3rd 34 (D.C. Cir. 2001), which arose out of Microsoft's efforts to promote Internet Explorer... View Details

Keywords: Lawsuits and Litigation; Software; Intellectual Property; Monopoly; Laws and Statutes; Information Technology Industry; District of Columbia

08 Mar 2012
Research & Ideas

Unplugged: What Happened to the Smart Grid?

increased demand, but these plants are expensive to maintain. Besides, much of the key power equipment is aging rapidly. After government moved to weaken monopolies that utilities enjoyed, those companies had little incentive to invest in... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Energy; Utilities

June 1998 (Revised December 2006)
Case

Clear Communications Ltd. vs. Telecom Corporation of New Zealand Ltd. (A)

By: Willis M. Emmons III and Martin Calles

Features the challenges facing an entrant in the New Zealand telecommunications market during the period 1989-1994. Clear Communications Ltd. (CCL), a joint venture owned by Bell Canada, MCI, New Zealand Television Corp., and Todd Companies, begins offering long... View Details

Keywords: Market Entry and Exit; Competition; Emerging Markets; Privatization; Monopoly; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Corporate Strategy; Business or Company Management; Expansion; Law; Telecommunications Industry; New Zealand

February 2024 (Revised May 2024)
Case

Lina Khan at the FTC: Redefining Antitrust in the Age of Big Tech

By: Joseph L. Badaracco Jr. and Susan Pinckney

In 2023 and 2024, the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Justice sued Google, Amazon, and Apple claiming antitrust violations. These lawsuits marked a shift in U.S. antitrust enforcement away from the Chicago School and towards the New Brandeis school of... View Details

Keywords: Transition; Government Administration; Lawsuits and Litigation; Monopoly; Technology Industry; United States; European Union; China; India

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

Read Now

26 Nov 2013
First Look

First Look: November 26

being included into the standard, become standard-essential patents (SEPs). In an attempt to curb the monopoly power that they create, most standard-setting organizations require the owners of patents covered by the standard to make a... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

03 Dec 2001
What Do You Think?

What Happens When the Sumo Master Learns Judo?

is happening is business as usual. Microsoft is facing a race with time and the markets to re-deploy monopoly profits from a waning desktop opportunity in order to become more competitive with sumos in other parts of the information... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

27 Jun 2005
Research & Ideas

The Potential Downside of Win-Win

the negotiation. In April 2001, the FTC filed a complaint accusing pharmaceutical companies Schering-Plough and Upsher-Smith of restricting trade. Upsher-Smith had been preparing to introduce a generic pharmaceutical product that would threaten a near View Details

Keywords: by Max H. Bazerman

12 Jul 2011
First Look

First Look: July 12

sellers is significant. However, if this difference is below a certain threshold, then even the incumbent platform will distort its quantity downward. Since a monopoly incumbent would set the welfare-maximizing quantity, this result... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

23 Oct 2007
First Look

First Look: October 23, 2007

particular, we let the upstream firm's marginal cost be private information, unknown to the downstream firms. The previous literature has argued that vertical integration is harmful because it allows an upstream monopolist to limit output to View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

03 Feb 2016
Research & Ideas

The State of Customer Service Leadership

just a US phenomenon. The proportion of jobs devoted to services has shown gains in both more and less developed economies for decades. We found that the US does not have a monopoly on great service leaders or best practices in service... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Aisner; Retail

July 1989 (Revised May 2004)
Case

Colonial Homes

By: David E. Bell

Colonial Homes supplies a complete raw materials package to build entire homes. The price of the package is guaranteed at the signing of the sales contract, while delivery (and payment) are not effected for up to six months. In an effort to reduce its exposure to... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Contracts; Price; Price Bubble; Fluctuation; Monopoly; Problems and Challenges; Sales; Accommodations Industry; Real Estate Industry

15 May 2012
First Look

First Look: May 15

monopoly incumbent would set the welfare-maximizing level of trade, this result indicates that platform competition may lead to a market failure: competition results in a lower level of trade and lower welfare than a monopoly. We also... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

14 Jun 2011
First Look

First Look: June 14

Abstract This paper provides a simple model of platforms with direct network effects, in which users value not just the quantity (i.e., number) of other users who join, but also their average quality in some dimension. A monopoly platform... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

20 May 2013
Op-Ed

Making America an Industrial Powerhouse Again

focused center, particularly if regional stakeholders become overly dominant, and the implicit goal becomes to support local industries. If this occurs, the NNMI is doomed to failure, since no one region has a monopoly on the expertise... View Details

Keywords: by Gary Pisano; Manufacturing

December 2024
Article

Is There Too Little Antitrust Enforcement in the U.S. Hospital Sector?

By: Zarek Brot-Goldberg, Zack Cooper, Stuart Craig and Lev Klarnet

From 2002 to 2020, there were over 1,000 mergers of U.S. hospitals. During this period, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took enforcement actions against 13 transactions. However, using the FTC’s standard screening tools, we find that 20% of these mergers could have... View Details

Keywords: Monopoly; Mergers and Acquisitions; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Competition; Health Industry

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2018
Chapter

The Orphan Drug Act at 35: Observations and an Outlook for the Twenty-First Century

By: Nicholas Bagley, Benjamin Berger, Amitabh Chandra, Craig Garthwaite and Ariel Dora Stern

On the 35th anniversary of the adoption of the Orphan Drug Act (ODA), we describe the enormous changes in the markets for therapies for rare diseases that have emerged over recent decades. The most prominent example is the fact that the profit-maximizing price of new... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Laws and Statutes; Research and Development; Investment; Markets; Monopoly