Five Brattle-Authored Articles Nominated for the 2021 Antitrust Writing Awards
Five Brattle-authored articles have been nominated for the 2021 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 Articles – Business” awards in the General Antitrust and Economics subcategories.
While the Awards Jury will select one winner in each subcategory, readers are encouraged to vote for their favorite articles for the Readers’ Choice Award. Voting is anonymous and open online through June 28.
Winners will be announced at the virtual Antitrust Writing Awards Ceremony on Wednesday, June 30. View Brattle’s nominated articles on the Concurrences website and learn more about them, below.
General Antitrust
Brattle Director of Global Development James Keyte coauthored “Buckle Up: The Global Future of Antitrust Enforcement and Regulation” for the Spring 2021 issue of the American Bar Association’s Antitrust Journal. The article discusses the current global antitrust landscape, which is a whirlwind of antitrust enforcement and regulation brought on by the global concern over the perceived power and entrenchment of tech platforms. As the future of global antitrust is shifting, the US is increasingly becoming an outlier in a global arena that tends to see market power and its abuse where US antitrust law does not.
Economics
Brattle President and Principal Dr. David Sunding and Principal Dr. Armando Levy coauthored “An Economic Treatment of Pass Through in Indirect Purchaser Antitrust Litigation” for the Spring 2020 issue of the California Lawyers Association’s Competition: The Journal of Antitrust, UCL and Privacy Section. The article addresses updates regarding retail pass-through rates, the percentage of wholesale price changes reflected in retail prices. Most often, indirect purchaser antitrust litigations are brought as class actions. For these cases, it is necessary to prove that a price increase resulting from anticompetitive activity directly affected the direct purchasers, as well as to calculate the pass-through rate of these overcharges from direct purchases to indirect purchasers. In order to obtain class certification, experts must be able to establish that there was indeed pass-through of costs to all or virtually all class members.
Brattle Principals Dr. Michael Cragg and Dr. Loren Smith and Senior Associate Dr. Charles Gibbons coauthored “Understanding the Econometric Tools of Antitrust – With No Math!” for the Spring 2021 issue of the American Bar Association’s The Antitrust Source. The article groups econometric techniques used by antitrust economics into three broad categories: summary statistics and simple data depictions, regression analysis, and structural models. Understanding the benefits and limitations of each of these categories will enable an antitrust practitioner to comprehend the possibilities of antitrust economics.
Brattle Principal Dr. Loren Smith coauthored “The Use of Econometrics in Merger Reviews” for the Spring 2020 newsletter of the American Bar Association’s Economics Committee. The article describes three types of econometric analyses – demand estimation and merger simulation, event studies, and price-concentration studies – that are often used in merger reviews to inform evaluations of the potential for mergers to cause anticompetitive harm. These econometric analyses can be used independently or in combination, depending on the data available during a merger review.
Brattle Principal Dr. Rosa Abrantes-Metz coauthored “A Note on Screens’ Worldwide Adoption and Success” for the December 2020 edition of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s RCC Lima newsletter. The article discusses the development of screens and their adaptation around the world over the last two decades, with a particular emphasis on their use by Central and South American countries. Screens analyze data on variables – such as prices, volumes, and market shares – that measure market outcomes to detect potential anticompetitive behavior, and they were used to flag possible manipulation in foreign exchange and the London Gold and Silver Fixings.
View Brattle’s nominated articles on the Concurrences website.
