All Posts Tagged With: "antitrust"

Hands Off

A Microsoft study from November 1997 reveals that the company could have charged $49 for an upgrade to Windows 98—there is no reason to believe that the $49 price would have been unprofitable—but the study identifies $89 as the revenue-maximizing price. Microsoft thus opted for the higher price. Thus wrote U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield [...]

1Feb2000 | | 0 comments | Continued

Stop Stopping Price Cutting

“There’s nothing new under the sun.” This aphorism speaks volumes about Uncle Sam’s antitrust suit against Microsoft. One of the government’s principal accusations in this suit is that Microsoft is a predator—meaning that the attractive deals that Microsoft today offers to consumers cannot be matched by its rivals. When the hapless rivals eventually are bankrupted [...]

1Nov1999 | | 0 comments | Continued

Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty with the Common Good

Law and economics were once openly tied, as witness the title of John Stuart Mill’s 1848 work, Principles of Political Economy. Or consider that Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek both held doctorates from the University of Vienna not in economics but in jurisprudence. Economics came into its own as a “pure” science, however, [...]

1Nov1999 | | 0 comments | Continued

Who’s Locked In to What?

Politicians and bureaucrats are prone to overemphasize problems with the world and to propose command-and-control “solutions.” Economists, sad to say, have aided and abetted that mindset with a series of suspect theories of how markets are doomed to perform inadequately. Thankfully, not all economists have played this game. Many of the better ones have done [...]

1Oct1999 | | 0 comments | Continued

So-Called Property Rights?

Remember William Weld? He was the Massachusetts governor (and presumed presidential wannabe), who resigned so President Clinton could appoint him to dispense advice as ambassador to Mexico. Those plans were derailed by Senator Jesse Helms, so now he makes money in Boston perhaps while planning his political future. Weld wrote an op-ed in the New [...]

1Apr1999 | | 0 comments | Continued

The Bully that Acts Like a Hero

Harold Jones teaches at Mercer University’s Eugene W. Stetson School of Business and Economics in Macon, Georgia. In 1995 President Clinton established what he called “Operation Restore Trust,” a Health and Human Services initiative aimed at wiping out fraud and abuse in the health-care industry. According to the administration, only terrorism surpassed health-care fraud as [...]

1Mar1999 | | 0 comments | Continued

Monster

Rule No. 1 for slaying the Hydra: slay it. Don’t just cut off one—or even a few—of its heads. That’s not good enough: the head might grow back. Kill it dead. How many times do we need to be taught that lesson before we learn it? During the presidency of Ronald Reagan the Department of [...]

1Feb1999 | | 0 comments | Continued

Opening Pandora’s Box

Dan Fylstra has been involved in the PC industry since its inception. He was founding associate editor of BYTE Magazine in 1975, and founder of VisiCorp in 1979. He is currently president of the PC software vendor Frontline Systems, Inc. This is excerpted from a longer “open letter” distributed on the Internet. Last year, Netscape [...]

1Nov1998 | | 0 comments | Continued

It Just Ain’t So!

Antitrust, now over a century old in the United States, has always had its supporters and critics. In the 1970s, however, a group of conservative scholars, including Richard Posner and Frank Easterbrook (who are now federal judges) and Robert Bork (now a retired federal judge), overwhelmed the existing consensus with devastating economic arguments and dramatically [...]

1Oct1998 | | 0 comments | Continued

Law and Disorder in Cyberspace

Solveig Singleton is director of information studies at the Cato Institute. The subtitle of Peter Huber’s Law and Disorder in Cyberspace proudly proclaims the book’s main theme: “Abolish the FCC and Let Common Law Rule the Telecosm.” Huber proposes a free-market revolution for telephone, broadcasting, cable television, satellite, and Internet services, tempered with a few [...]

1Oct1998 | | 1 comment | Continued

It Just Ain’t So!

The government’s harassment of Microsoft has uncorked a gusher of silly journalism. On May 19, even the Wall Street Journal joined the flow. Alan Murray’s front-page essay, “Reading Rockefeller and Busting Up Trusts,” is a soup of errors and strained logic. Murray is horrified by accounts of Standard Oil’s large size and Rockefeller’s “obsession for [...]

1Sep1998 | | 0 comments | Continued

Arrogant Antitrusters

Here’s a quiz. I’ll first give you background facts, then ask you a question. Please answer “yes” or “no.” Facts: I have no experience in, or knowledge about, running a dry-cleaning establishment. I’m an economist who has spent his career teaching economics. My only experience with dry-cleaning firms is that I use them to clean [...]

1Aug1998 | | 1 comment | Continued

The Ghost of John D. Rockefeller

At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on competitiveness in the computer industry last March, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates was compared to the infamous “robber baron” John D. Rockefeller and his company likened to the Standard Oil Company of the late nineteenth century. Federal Trade Commission chairman Robert Pitofsky made a similar analogy in a Washington [...]

1Jun1998 | | 0 comments | Continued

The Attack on Concentration

Editor’s Note: Yale Brozen, former member of FEE’s board of trustees and a retired professor of business economics at the University of Chicago, died March 4. Reprinted below as a memorial is his article published in The Freeman, January 1979. It is especially timely because of the government’s current legal action against Microsoft. Once we [...]

1Jan1998 | | 0 comments | Continued

Great Turnabouts in Economics

We can only admire the scholar who is willing to change when he is convinced by the facts or a new theory. It takes a strong dose of courage and honesty to go against one’s vested interest, especially after publishing books and articles on the subject.

1Nov1997 | | 1 comment | Continued

Federal Government Growth Before the New Deal

Professor Holcombe teaches economics at Florida State University. Popular opinion holds that most of the credit (or blame) for the incredible growth of the federal government should go to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal. While Roosevelt certainly was a willing participant in that process, the federal government began its amazingly rapid growth [...]

1Sep1997 | | 0 comments | Continued

The Economic Woes of Pro Sports: Greed or Government?

Mr. Keating is chief economist with the Washington, D.C.-based Small Business Survival Foundation. Beyond labor strife, two issues particularly annoy pro sports fans today—exorbitant player salaries and city-hopping by teams. Player salaries that seem wildly out of kilter have been bothersome for some time. For example, the average Major League Baseball player reportedly earned $1.2 [...]

1Jan1997 | | 0 comments | Continued
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