Jonathan B. Baker

The article argues that Trumpian populism could presage the end of an 80-year era in antitrust enforcement and lead to long term instability in antitrust enforcement policy, which no longer seems settled and technocratic. Published in Antitrust LJ and also available at ssrn.com/abstract=562... 3/3

They say their approach is “conservative” but it differs from that of the Chicagoans who have been the primary conservative voices since the Reagan admin. Instead, Trumpian populist rhetoric on antitrust reflects New Right thinking and recalls the Lochner era of constitutional interpretation. 2/3

My new article “Trumpian Populism and the Changing Intellectual Landscape in Antitrust: Century-Old Resonances, the New Right, and the Possible End of an Era” looks at the views of current senior antitrust enforcement officials. 1/3

The HMT refines the demand substitution focus in the caselaw (e.g., duPont (Cellophane)) by suggesting a conceptual metric to determine how much demand substitution is too much to define a market. Looking just to Brown Shoe doesn't tell you how to think about that.

I see the HMT as differing from Brown Shoe for a different reason: The HMT looks only to evidence about a single economic force, demand (buyer) substitution, while some Brown Shoe factors are about other economic forces. As you say, both approaches integrate qualitative & qualitative evidence.

Abstract of "New Economic Forces Behind the Value Distribution of Innovation." Advances in a general-purpose technology (GPT) enable many firms to invent complementary inventions, or co-inventions, making the GPT more valuable. This study examines the empirical implications of a straightforward model in which firms choose either incremental or novel co-invention. Incremental co-inventors aspire to small gains at low costs and with less uncertainty. Novel co-inventors introduce new products or services with the potential for large returns, but do so at high costs and with uncertain outcomes. Similar firms investing in incremental co-invention will create value proportional to their existing business, a benchmark we illustrate with the experiences at local radio and newspapers. The study then examines the value of co-inventions for the World Wide Web and mobile ecosystems, focusing on success in 2013, using data from many sources. This data supports analysis comparing the incremental and novel regimes. The latter should display a distinctly different up! per tail of the distribution of returns. We show that the value distributions for incremental and novel co-invention are far apart. Incremental co-invention is more widely distributed across regions, industries, and firms. Success from novel co-invention is rare, challenging, and the source of the largest value. In the aggregate, novel co-invention creates the most value, so the overall value distribution remains concentrated in a few industries, regions, and firms.

New Working Paper! Lucky to work with Shane Greenstein @shanegreenstein.bsky.social and Pai-Ling Yin on "New Economic Forces Behind the Value Distribution of Innovation." Abstract and link follow.

lnkd.in/ew6UHk3v

Looming problems from BLS statistics politicization. Social security benefits and many long term labor market contracts are indexed to the CPI. BLS makes the CPI. Recipients care about indexed cost of living increases, a lot.
/1

Agreed—market def in this case seems too fact-bound to be a good candidate for cert.

Nested markets are fine if the facts support both. I could imagine, for example, markets for colas, all soft drinks, and all beverages. If all satisfy the hypothetical monopolist test, conduct that harms competition in any one of them (or more than one) would presumably violate the antitrust laws.

I recently reviewed Louis Kaplow’s book "Rethinking Merger Analysis." The review evaluates the book’s discussion of market definition, coordinated effects, entry, efficiencies, and the welfare standard. Available in The Antitrust Source or at ssrn.com/abstract=533...

A Pro-Competitive Handbook for Policymakers to Unlock Digital Competition - ProMarket Fiona Scott Morton introduces her new book on how regulators and policymakers can promote competition and fairness in digital markets.

Are you wondering how to make monopoly digital platforms more competitive? I have a new book with answers. Intro article here in ProMarket: www.promarket.org/2025/06/26/a...

Lunch with some DC area antitrust professors. With @profgavil.bsky.social @lancierifilippo.bsky.social Dale Collins and @stevesalop.bsky.social

While the second Trump administration's initial moves in #antitrust enforcement suggested continuity, more recent actions outside the realm of antitrust enforcement have the potential to change #competitionpolicy dramatically, explains @jbbecon.bsky.social.
cepr.org/publications...
#EconSky

📢 New CEPR #eBook out NOW! 📚
"The Economic Consequences of the Second Trump Administration: A Preliminary Assessment"
Editors: Gary Gensler, @simonhrjohnson.bsky.social, @upanizza.bsky.social, @wederdim.bsky.social
Free download: cepr.org/publications...
#EconSky

Digital Platform Regulation

I have a new book! Digital Platform Regulation. Fun analysis of what society should do to get some competition out of of our favorite gatekeeper platform. Relevant to the DMA and US antitrust remedies. And free! Download here:
som.yale.edu/centers/thur...

Slater’s perspective favors strong antitrust. But it’s natural to wonder whether liberty protection—the intellectual basis for what she calls a new right realignment in antitrust—would, like Lochner era thinking, now justify non-antitrust policies to circumscribe social & economic regulation. 5/5

Slater also recalls the 19th c in her populist framing of antitrust as supporting “forgotten men and women”—for her consumers, workers, and small businesses and innovators in Little Tech, manufacturing, and family farms—against private monopolies, particularly “online platforms” 4/5

That view animated the Supreme Court’s 1899 Addyston Pipe decision, a leading antitrust precedent still read today written by Justice Rufus Peckham. Peckham famously supported expansive substantive due process protection for contract and property rights. 3/5

Slater emphasizes that individual liberty is threatened by “corporate tyranny” just as it is threatened by government tyranny. Similarly, the Lochner era Supreme Court objected to all artificial interference with the market, public or private, as inconsistent with the “liberty of contract.” 2/5

Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater Delivers First Antitrust Address at University of Notre Dame Law School Good afternoon. Thank you so much for having me. It is an honor to be here at Notre Dame to give my first formal address as Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division. I’ve had many offers

When AAG Slater roots her “America First Antitrust” (www.justice.gov/opa/speech/a...) in “conservative values,” she recalls judicial thinking from over a century ago. 1/5

Six years old…and still worth reading 🙂

Threats to Competition Policy in the Second Trump Administration: Is Antitrust Enforcement Following Alice Down the Rabbit Hole? - ProMarket After the second Trump administration initially appeared to maintain significant continuity in antitrust enforcement, the president more recently thrust the agencies into turmoil. Those later actions ...

NEW: After the second Trump administration initially appeared to maintain significant continuity in antitrust enforcement, the president more recently thrust the agencies into turmoil. Those later actions create troubling risks to the economy and the rule of law, writes @jbbecon.bsky.social.

Threats to Competition Policy in the Second Trump Administration: Is Antitrust Enforcement Following Alice Down the Rabbit Hole? - ProMarket After the second Trump administration initially appeared to maintain significant continuity in antitrust enforcement, the president more recently thrust the agencies into turmoil. Those later actions ...

Threats to Competition Policy in the Second Trump Administration: Is Antitrust Enforcement Following Alice Down the Rabbit Hole?

My new blog post: www.promarket.org/2025/04/11/t...

I gave a list of examples such as unilateral effects of mergers and raising rivals' costs analysis, and said "Those developments often moved the law and enforcement in a direction counter to the distributional interest of big business." From ssrn.com/abstract=449... 4/4

On the role of economics, I wrote in 2023 that "the big business capture theory cannot readily rationalize the not insubstantial influence ... of developments in economics since the 1970s that called into question non-interventionist perspectives" 3/4

..."Trump has organized his political movement around cultural and identity issues, not economic issues.”
Both quotes from ssrn.com/abstract=414... I also noted differences between the economic interests of Trumpian populists and big business. That's not saying big business favors democracy. 2/4

On democracy, here's what I wrote in 2022 (before Trump began to work with Musk): "[T]he imminent threat to democracy comes from authoritarians, not from the political power of large firm interests—at least so long as big business avoids making common cause with Trumpian populists." 1/4

Whether courts should extend Rambus to merger and agreement cases turns primarily on error cost considerations that may look different to courts today than they appeared when Rambus was decided. Paper: ssrn.com/abstract=511.... 9/9

Policy issues: the practical ability of courts to deter harmful conduct, error cost considerations, and non-economic values. Legal issue: whether Rambus v. FTC, a unilateral conduct case requiring increased market power to flow from lessened competition, extends to merger and agreement cases. 8/9

Lessened competition can generate increased market power, but it is not the only mechanism that can lead to that outcome. Whether the antitrust laws should reach conduct where increased market power does not flow from lessened competition turns on legal and policy considerations. 7/9