Competition in the Digital Age
One of the popular travel options in Toronto is Porter Airlines which operates out of the City Airport and so is just 15 minutes from my University of Toronto office. Because it is a small airport, it is the kind of airport where you can literally leave an hour before your flight with no problems. …
Continue reading "A new one for price discrimination: taxing the late"
The first issue of AER Insights is out and the very first article is one by Francesco Caselli and Alan Manning on "Robot Arithmetic: New Technologies and Wages." Here is the abstract: Existing economic models show how new technology can cause large changes in relative wages and inequality. But there are also claims, based largely …
When Paul Romer expresses an opinion, it is always worthwhile to listen because it is always well-considered. In an opinion piece in the New York Times, he puts forward a proposal to restore what he terms is the "public commons" of the provision of information in support of democracy. He actually puts forward two linked …
This week saw the launch of a new podcast startup, Luminary. With $100 million in the bank and podcasters like Trevor Noah and Adam Davidson signed up, they are hoping to become the Netflix of Podcasts. To access that content costs $7.99 but the content is ad-free. They had a post on Twitter proclaiming that …
That is the question that Dina Srinivasan answers in the affirmative in her paper "The Antitrust Case Against Facebook." This is an interesting set of issues because, frankly, my observation is that Facebook, while having a dominant position in social media (which is not an antitrust violation) had not violated antitrust law getting to that position …
Continue reading "Are broken promises an antitrust violation?"
A couple of days ago, Spotify announced it was pushing the European Commission to investigate Apple's app store practices. They claimed that Apple was discriminating against them (and presumably other streaming services) on account of their own competing Apple Music service. Spotify claimed they had to pay Apple 30 per cent of their revenue which …
There are many people wanting to unroll past tech acquisitions. Others certainly would advocate doing it differently if there was another chance. For instance, Ben Thompson called Facebook being allowed to purchase Instagram "the greatest regulatory failure of the last decade." I don't really see that but that is another matter. The problem, at the …
Continue reading "Compulsory licensing is better than blocking acquisitions"
