Six Brattle-Authored Articles Nominated for the 2022 Antitrust Writing Awards
Six Brattle-authored articles have been nominated for the 2022 Antitrust Writing Awards, which are presented annually by Concurrences and the George Washington University Competition Law Center to honor the best in antitrust commentary. Brattle authors are up for “Best Article” awards in both the Business (Mergers and Private Enforcement) and Academic (Economics) categories.
While the Awards Jury will select one winner in each subcategory, readers are encouraged to vote for their favorite overall academic and business articles for the Readers’ Choice Awards in the two respective categories. Voting is anonymous and open online through Friday, March 25, 2022.
Winners will be announced at the Antitrust Writing Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, April 5, 2022. View Brattle’s nominated business articles and academic articles on the Concurrences website and learn more about them below.
Business Articles
Subcategory: Mergers
Principal and Co-Leader of Brattle’s Global Antitrust & Competition Practice Dr. Loren Smith coauthored “The Other Side of the Coin: Complementarity in Mergers of Multiproduct Firms” for the October 2021 issue of Antitrust Magazine Online. The article proposes an approach to weighing the economic effects of substitutability and complementarity in mergers of multiproduct firms and discusses the practical implications of doing so.
Brattle Director of Global Development James Keyte authored “New Merger Guidelines: Are the Agencies on a Collision Course with Case Law?” for a forthcoming issue of Antitrust Magazine. The article discusses the main differences between the Neo-Brandeisian school of antitrust and the consumer-welfare standard, including its post-Chicago School iteration, and the prospect that courts will defer to the enforcement agencies on new merger standards that are likely to harken back to a more bright-line structural view of antitrust policy and enforcement.
Subcategory: Private Enforcement
Brattle Principal Dr. Nicholas Powers coauthored “Differing Proof Requirements for Global Class Actions: Using Economic Analysis to Guide Future Policymakers” for the Summer 2021 issue of Antitrust Magazine. The article surveys the various key standards of proof for class certification and identifies different ways in which departures from an optimal standard for judging class actions could, under certain assumptions, harm some parties or lead to losses in efficiency.
Academic Articles
Subcategory: Economics
Principal and Co-Leader of Brattle’s Global Antitrust & Competition Practice Dr. Loren Smith coauthored “The Competitive Implications of Private Label Mergers” for the June 2021 issue of the Antitrust Law Journal. The article presents how existing methods for assessing the likely competitive effects of horizontal mergers can be applied to the private label merger context, considering both stages of the supply chain at which private label products compete.
Brattle Principal Dr. Minjae Song authored “Estimating Platform Market Power in Two-Sided Markets with an Application to Magazine Advertising” for the May 2021 issue of the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics. The article uses a structural model to show that – in two-sided markets, where two groups of agents interact through platforms or intermediaries – platforms may take a loss on one side of the market to make a profit on the other side. Platform mergers may benefit some agents by lowering prices or attracting more agents on the other side of the market.
Brattle Academic Advisor Professor Kai-Uwe Kühn coauthored “The Competitive Constraints from Private Label Offers on Branded Grocery Pricing,” a working paper for the Centre for Competition Policy. Traditionally, competition authorities have considered large price differences between branded and private label products as evidence that branded and private label products are in separate markets. However, the paper argues that private label products should generally be considered to be in the same market as branded products in the same product group. A detailed analysis should be conducted to ascertain actual competitive interactions in specific markets.
