Ruled by Reason

In this episode, former AAI Vice President of Policy Laura Alexander discusses the concept of countervailing power and the controversial role in plays in antitrust and competition law with NYU Associate Professor Daniel Francis, one of the leading voices on this subject. The idea that otherwise unlawful cartels, mergers, and collaborations should be allowed between companies facing a monopolists or monopsonists across the bargaining table is a tantalizing perceived solution to counteract the very real problem of persistent market power.  Deploying such countervailing power, however, is also fraught with serious risks for competition and consumers.  As Francis explains, such collaborations rarely improve competition or minimize the impact of market power on consumers, but do often lock-in or increase existing market power and slow innovation.  The conversation starts with an overview of the concept of countervailing power as an antitrust and competition tool, and then goes on to discuss the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, a bill being considered by the Senate that would apply countervailing power principles to create an exception to the antitrust laws for news organizations bargaining with large tech companies.  Finally, the episode concludes with a discussion of why countervailing power remains a persistent idea in antitrust circles, despite its tension with antitrust’s longstanding commitment to competition.

In this podcast episode, AAI Vice President of Legal Advocacy Randy Stutz talks with two experts who have led pioneering empirical research into antitrust class actions, Rose Kohles and Josh Davis. Stutz talks with Kohles and Davis about the Huntington Bank and UC Hastings “2021 Antitrust Annual Report: Class Action Filings in Federal Court,” and how empirical research into antitrust class actions might challenge the entrenched views of both tort-reform advocates and class-action proponents.  The three discuss previous efforts at empirical study of antitrust class actions prior to the Annual Report, which is now in its fourth edition (5:00), the type and nature of empirical data that is available and collected in the Annual Report and the role of class-action policy debate in shaping empirical study more generally (10:10), how empirical data may inform new arguments that support or refute various arguments on different sides of class-action debates (17:43), whether empirical data could inform legal arguments or judicial decision-making in court, including in the issuance of fee awards (25:37), whether empirical data might suggest legislative or other class-action reform proposals (32:32), and interesting developments reflected in the most recent edition of the Annual Report, covering data from 2009-2021 (36:54). 

In this podcast, AAI President Diana Moss talks with two experts about Telehealth and the many issues that it raises for the healthcare system, providers, and patients. These include policy questions around medical licensing, impact and equity, and competition. Telehealth is the distribution of health-related services and information via electronic and telecommunication technology. As a distinct modality, It allows for long-distance patient and clinician contact and the many elements, from patient care to remote admissions. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Telehealth has been notable and health systems, payers, employers, and new entrants have worked to expand Telehealth services. AAI’s guests on this episode of Ruled by Reason will discuss the many questions surrounding Telehealth today. For example, how will health systems deliver complex healthcare services via Telehealth? Which population segments and practice areas are likely to drive future utilization? How will medical licensing policies affect Telehealth moving forward? And how does competition in the healthcare supply chain, especially in health insurance, impact the provision of Telehealth services? 

In this podcast, AAI President Diana Moss talks with two experts in the agriculture sector about corn, a leading U.S. crop. Many farmers bow face serious margin “squeezes.” They pay higher and higher prices to oligopolies and cartels for inputs that are necessary to grow their commodities. But growers then sell into markets where commodity prices are often controlled by only a few firms, such as in proteins, or are subject to the significant vagaries of price fluctuations. This episode of Ruled by Reason will focus on how corn growers are paying high input costs, especially for fertilizer. Economic studies, including a recent one authored by a guest on this podcast, reveal serious concerns about high fertilizer prices. These prices have been set for years by a small group of global fertilizer producers that likely coordinate, rather than compete. Anticompetitive fertilizer prices hurt corn growers and consumers, and imperil the stability and integrity of a vital agricultural supply chain.

In this episode, AAI Vice President of Policy Laura Alexander discusses third-party litigation funding and its impact on private antitrust class actions with two experts in the field, one of the country’s foremost litigators of antitrust class actions and a representative from a leading litigation funder with deep experience in antitrust.  Antitrust class actions are expensive to bring and prosecute.  Historically, plaintiffs’ lawyers have used their own assets and traditional bank loans to finance them, in a high-risk/high-reward business model.  In the last decade, however, an alternative funding model has emerged: litigation funding firms have begun financing plaintiff-side antitrust litigation for profit using non-recourse debt, shifting risk and reward from the lawyers to the funders and, in the process, changing the landscape of private antitrust litigation and class actions.  The conversation starts with a primer on litigation funding, and goes on to discuss how funding decisions factor into leadership and settlement dynamics, how litigation funding impacts which cases are brought and who brings them, and how monetization of claims is changing incentives for opt outs and what that might portend for class actions.  Finally, the episode concludes with an analysis of the different role that litigation funding plays in collective actions abroad, and what lessons we might draw from foreign jurisdictions for funding class actions in the U.S.

In this episode Diana Moss sits down with Carl Shapiro, Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California at Berkeley, to unpack the debate over the role of antitrust and how to invigorate enforcement of the antitrust laws in the United States. In framing the dialog over where antitrust should go, they create a multi-faceted conversation that reveals why competition is a broader and important public policy issue problem for a market-based economy and democratic society. Major themes include the controversy over indicators of declining competition, recent changes to the antitrust ideological spectrum, proposed legislative reforms to the antitrust laws, revisions to the Horizontal Merger Guidelines, and the challenges that face the Biden antitrust chiefs at the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division and Federal Trade Commission. These threshold questions have critical implications for the effectiveness of antitrust enforcement moving forward in promoting competition and for protecting consumers and workers.

In this episode, AAI Vice President of Competition Laura Alexander and Gwendolyn Cooley, Wisconsin’s Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust and Chair of the Multistate Antitrust Task Force for the National Association of Attorneys General discuss the state of state antitrust enforcement.  The conversation covers “antitrust federalism” and the current relationship between state and federal antitrust enforcers, unique hurdles faced by state antitrust enforcers, the special expertise state enforcers bring to antitrust enforcement, and the priorities of states in enforcing state and federal antitrust laws.  State antitrust enforcers have been leading the charge on everything from non-compete clauses to privacy, and with a reinvigoration of antitrust enforcement at the federal level, new avenues for cooperation and coordination are opening up for states to take on an even bigger role.

In this episode, Diana Moss sits down with Scott Hemphill, the Moses H. Grossman Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law, to chat about his award-winning article: Nascent Competitors (Vol. 168 (No. 7), Penn. L. Review, 2020). Hemphill co-authored the article with Timothy Wu, currently serving as Special Assistant to President Biden for Technology and Competition Policy at the National Economic Council. The article highlights major issues and debate around how antitrust enforcers and the courts go about evaluating acquisitions of nascent competitors that could violate Section 7 of the Clayton Act. Nascent competitors are firms whose prospective innovation is a “threat” to firms in a market. This threat is neutralized if a nascent rival is acquired, sometimes with serious implications for competition and consumers. Attention to acquisitions of nascent competitors has exploded across a number of sectors, including digital technology, fintech, healthcare, digital farming, and others. For business models that are driven by “growth by acquisition,” revisiting antitrust enforcement and competition policy around nascent rivals is particularly timely and important.   Antitrust scholarship that is considered and selected for the Jerry S. Cohen award reflects a concern for principles of economic justice, the dispersal of economic power, the maintenance of effective limitations upon economic power or the federal statutes designed to protect society from various forms of anticompetitive activity. Scholarship reflects an awareness of the human and social impacts of economic institutions upon individuals, small businesses and other institutions necessary to the maintenance of a just and humane society–values and concerns Jerry S. Cohen dedicated his life and work to fostering.

In this episode, AAI President Diana Moss sits down with two experts to discuss the state of play in competition in freight rail. Freight rail is a vital part of the U.S. transportation system. It is the second largest mode of transportation in the U.S. and industry sources estimate that freight rail shipments will increase 30% by 2040. Railroads, and the shippers that transport on them, are responsible for the movement of critical commodities and products involving agriculture, energy, automotive, chemical, construction, and forestry. But we don’t hear much in the news about the state of competition in freight rail in the U.S. That’s unfortunate, since the sector has been home to massive consolidation over the last half a century. Since about 1950, there have been over 80 railroad mergers in the U.S. Today, there are only 5 domestic Class I railroads operating in the U.S.—two in the west, two in the east, and one down the middle.  My two guests on this episode are experts in rail competition. We will unpack the state of competition and consolidation in freight rail and what it means for shippers and consumers. We start at the 10,000 foot level, explaining why competition in rail transportation matters and walking through a brief history of U.S. rail consolidation. Next, we do some deeper dives into how railroad mergers diminish competition and who is harmed. We finish with how harmful railroad mergers are remedied by the government and some of the major, current regulatory policy initiatives for addressing competition issues, including reciprocal switching, and others. 

In this episode, Roger Noll, AAI Senior Fellow and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, talks with winners of the 2020 Jerry S. Cohen award for antitrust scholarship. Nancy Rose and Jonathan Sallet unpack key aspects of efficiencies in horizontal mergers in their article The Dichotomous Treatment of Efficiencies in Horizontal Mergers, Too Much? Too Little? Getting it Right (Vol. 168, Penn. L. Rev., 2020). The article highlights that the extent to which horizontal mergers deliver competitive benefits that offset any potential for competitive harm is a critical issue in antitrust enforcement. Based on their economic analysis of merger efficiencies, the authors find that a substantial body of work casts doubt on their presumed existence and size. Rose and Sallet discuss the major implications of their work in this Ruled by Reason conversation, including the likely need for changes in current enforcement approaches. Antitrust scholarship that is considered and selected for the Jerry S. Cohen award reflects a concern for principles of economic justice, the dispersal of economic power, the maintenance of effective limitations upon economic power or the federal statutes designed to protect society from various forms of anticompetitive activity. Scholarship reflects an awareness of the human and social impacts of economic institutions upon individuals, small businesses and other institutions necessary to the maintenance of a just and humane society–values and concerns Jerry S. Cohen dedicated his life and work to fostering.