Publications: Aurelien Portuese, PhD

With its provocative claim that America now has less economic competition than the EU, Thomas Philippon’s book The Great Reversal has become a bible for neo-Brandeisians. But reports of the death of competition in America are highly exaggerated: While U.S. antitrust remains effective, EU competition policy has failed to stimulate innovation, productivity, or growth.

Antitrust authorities want to revise merger guidelines based on dubious theories of potential harm that fail to recognize how many mergers foster innovation, productivity, and U.S. global competitiveness. New merger guidelines should better account for these considerations.

Throughout its 100-year-plus history, U.S. antitrust policy has studiously ignored the issue of global economic competitiveness. Indeed, U.S. antitrust enforcers have often harmed U.S. companies while helping their foreign counterparts, as DOJ would do by blocking the Microsoft-Activision aquisition.

Large retail companies are more productive than small retailers. That is why they can offer better prices to consumers, pay higher wages to their employees, and contribute more to the overall economy—which puts the lie to the neo-Brandeisian argument that “big is bad.”

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) fails to clearly explain how it will affect different types of mobile ecosystems. The European Commission's recent workshop to examine the DMA’s requirements for alternate app distribution and interoperability provided neither regulatory clarity nor addressed economic concerns related to its unintended consequences.

Just as there was opposition to the corporate economy in the early 1900s, there is opposition to the platform economy today. But limiting “platformization” would have considerable long-lasting economic costs for the nation and consumers.

In Competition Policy International, Aurelien Portuese writes on digital news aggregators and why the traditional approach favors inefficiency and stifles innovation.

The regulatory onslaught from Europe will not transpose well in Canada because of the latter’s idiosyncratic circumstances: a smaller market, fewer innovation capabilities, and a more commercially avoidable market.

President Biden has accused leading U.S. tech companies of destroying privacy, spreading harmful content, and hurting competition. Not only are these alleged abuses vastly overblown, but the regulatory solutions he appears to endorse would do more harm than good.

If the FTC is concerned that games like “Call of Duty” may be removed from competing platforms, then the solution is simple: It could settle with Microsoft, requiring the company to make this content available on other platforms.