OpenMarket: Antitrust and Competition

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Yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission was slated to vote on a modified version of a proposal it unveiled back in February to rewrite the rules governing cable set-top...

At CEI’s 2016 annual dinner—A Night in Casablanca!—in DC, I caught up with three interesting gentlemen for a dose of common sense economics.

Up first is Dr. Bruce Yandle, dean emeritus of Clemson University’s College of Business and Behavioral Science and winner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s 2016 Julian L. Simon Memorial Award, boldly carrying on Simon’s legacy celebrating free people as the "ultimate resource." Yandle describes the current macroeconomic scene, defined by slow growth sliding into global currency and trade...

Net neutrality proponents have seen their lines splinter over the issue of “zero rating,” the practice of not counting data used to access certain sites and content against a user’s data cap. While consumers have flocked to carriers, such as T-Mobile, which offer such services, many net neutrality fundamentalists point out that zero rating is a violation of the principle that all data be treated the same all the time. This mantra has been successful in getting zero-rated applications, such as Facebook’s Free Basics, outlawed in some countries (like Chile and India).

In the...

When you hear about “crony capitalism,” what comes to mind? The Export-Import Bank? The ethanol mandate? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Tax credits and loan guarantees for “green energy”? These are all prime examples of government intervention enriching narrow yet politically savvy corporate interests at the expense of taxpayers and consumers. But many other pernicious forms of crony capitalism slide under the radar. A case in point: the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) vetting of media and telecom mergers, a highly politicized process that empowers a few unelected bureaucrats to shape the future of entire markets.

Almost a year ago, the cable company Charter made a deal to purchase another cable company, Bright House Networks. Then, after the FCC decided to block another cable deal—Comcast’s attempted acquisition of Time Warner Cable (TWC)—Charter announced that it...

The folks at Food & Water Watch are pissed. And I don’t mean “pissed” as in drunk; they are mad as hell about the proposed merger between two big breweries and demanding the Department of Justice step in and block the deal. Despite the fact that big breweries have been merging and acquiring bits and pieces of each other for decades, F&WW believes that allowing Anheuser-Bush InBev to acquire SABMiller would bring about an end to this golden age of beer we’re currently enjoying. My advice to them is to crack open a beer and take a deep breath.

After months of negotiation, Anheuser-Busch InBev (purveyor of Budweiser, Stella, and now Corona) announced it had reached an agreement to acquire...

This is the third in a series of essays on the FTC’s investigation of Apple Music. In Part II of this series, we demonstrated that, even if Apple were to ban rival music services from offering iOS apps, competition in the smartphone market would significantly mitigate any threat to competition in the music streaming market. This section will ignore this effect and look instead at how Apple’s actual actions, unhindered by consumers’ ability to switch phones, would affect competition in the music streaming market.

Recall from Part I that although Apple imposes several restrictions on rival music streaming services, these restrictions are largely illusory because they apply only to sales made through these services’ iOS apps. Any consumer can...

This is the second in a series of essays on the FTC’s investigation of Apple Music. Part I discussed the reason for the FTC’s investigation as well as the facts behind the allegations levied at Apple. This part will look at the situation from an economic perspective and examine the extent to which competition in the market for smartphones would mitigate any threat to competition in the music streaming market arising due to Apple’s supposedly anti-competitive actions.

Before we consider the competitive effects of Apple’s actions, it’s important that we investigate the extent to which the severity of Apple’s actions is even relevant. Consider the following thought experiment:

Assume that Apple were to unilaterally ban all music streaming companies from offering iOS apps...