a book that has had an expanding influence on the public conversation about market competition. Robert Frank and Philip Cook’s 1995 The Winner-Take-All Society argued as consumers. Consequently, consumers’ interests should be the focus of public policy, rather than the growing incomes of the producers who provided those greater
to “just get along”? The explanation revolves around two important ways political competition differs from market competition: higher payoffs to negative attacks, and therefore is much harder to “sell” to voters paying limited attention. Any public policy has many effects, some of which will be adverse, and those can be easily
uncertainty implies that we cannot know in advance what choices or policies would actually achieve that goal in the state of the world that will and mistake costs by more as a result. As Armen Alchian noted, that can explain a policy of price stabilization (to reduce mistake and search costs), along with cases competitive in the real world, even though it violates assumptions of perfect competition, which is the nirvana standard used for evaluation. What if we assume
Muris has recently noted , “President Biden rejects the economics-driven antitrust policies of the past 40 years.” In contrast, President Joe Biden “promised to return “where the effect of such discrimination may be substantially to lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly.” Its most important application was to
it could strike down substantial protectionist barriers against wine industry competition. The FTC documented the substantial cost to consumers of state salesmen, whether marketers of products in the private sector, politicians selling policy claims to the public, or lawyers making cases before the Supreme Court, strive
Oil case. Unfortunately, the mythology and aftermath of that case has undermined competition and harmed consumers ever since. The myth was pushed most publically by of the Standard Oil case is at all responsible for the emphasis that anti-trust policy places on ‘unfair’ and ‘monopolizing’ business practices, that emphasis is
can lead to serious misunderstanding when people reason by analogy from sports competitions to market competition (shorthand for whatever voluntary arrangements people make with one thinking, faulty logic, and misrepresentation that typically misinform public-policy discussions. As a result, to help students get and retain what they have
some of my favorite wisdom from it, which stands in sharp contrast with public policy discourse. Economic analysiselegant tools and rigorous techniques of thought institutions, inappropriate property fights, wasteful processes, debilitating policies. The best of achievable worlds will still be a world of scarcity—and thus a world of choices, costs, and competition. But good economics will help us to do best, even if not well, in a hard
their words , the merger would give Microsoft “both the means and motive to harm competition.” How could that happen? Supposedly by “manipulating Activision’s it often collaborates with the international organization to advance antitrust policy, one would think that the FTC would follow its lead and greenlight this
wrote that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” criticizing adverse policies and proposals falsely claimed to be based in patriotism. This has been most extent of protectionism is far vaster than most people recognize. All obstacles to competition, be they foreign or domestic, are but variants of this theme. The
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.