On this episode of Ruled by Reason, AAI Senior Counsel David O. Fisher talks with leading economist Ioana Marinescu about the theoretical frameworks underpinning labor monopsony and how they apply in various antitrust law and policy contexts.

The conversation centers on Marinescu's recent paper with coauthor José Azar, Monopsony Power in the Labor Market: From Theory to Policy, which lays out the theoretical frameworks underlying monopsony power in labor markets and develops a theory-informed discussion of antitrust law and policy. The conversation begins with an examination of Marinescu's background and her research on labor markets and monopsony power (3:15). She then explains the three main theoretical frameworks underpinning labor monopsony as reflected in the literature: oligopsony, differentiated jobs, and search-and-matching frictions (10:04).

The conversation then moves to a discussion of how economists determine which models to apply in which context (18:47). In the enforcement context, Marinescu examines the usefulness of each framework in the context of enforcing against no-poach and wage fixing agreements (21:24), and underscores the significance of a 2023 study by Tania Babina and co-authors which finds that antitrust enforcement against anti-competitive conduct tends to increase overall employment and business formation (26:48). Marinescu also discusses merger enforcement, and how each of the three theoretical frameworks apply in the merger context as reflected in the 2023 Merger Guidelines (30:53). Finally, she examines the theoretical work supporting the FTC's Noncompete Rule, and whether it supports the agency's current approach of addressing noncompete clauses on a case-by-case basis (35:24).

In this episode of Ruled by Reason, guest host John B. "Jack" Kirkwood, Professor of Law and the William C. Oltman Professor of Teaching Excellence at Seattle University School of Law, sits down with Daniel Francis, Assistant Professor of Law at NYU Law School. The two discuss Francis's award-winning article, Monopolizing by Conditioning, 124 Colum. L. Rev. 1917 (2024).

Professor Francis's article won the 23rd Annual Jerry S. Cohen Memorial Fund Writing Award, presented on May 29 at AAI's 2025 Annual Policy Conference, The State of the Antitrust Technocracy. The article demonstrates that conditional dealing should be recognized as its own, separate form of monopolistic conduct rather than squeezed into ill-fitting categories in existing monopolization law. It provides a new analytical framework for evaluating conditional dealing, including a definition of conditioning and standards for gauging its exclusionary impact, contribution to power, and procompetitive justifications. It also explains why courts' current criteria for evaluating claims based on conditional dealing should be jettisoned.

On this episode of Ruled by Reason, AAI Senior Counsel David O. Fisher chats with economist Edoardo Peruzzi and antitrust scholar Christine Bartholomew about the role of Daubert challenges in antitrust suits, focusing on the increasing role of Daubert as a gatekeeping device that may be hindering private antitrust enforcement.

The conversation begins with an examination of Peruzzi's recent working paper, which finds that Daubert challenges have become more frequent in antitrust cases and that, although plaintiffs' experts are challenged more frequently, defendants' experts are more often excluded (6:30). Bartholomew places Peruzzi's findings within a context of increased procedural gatekeeping in antitrust cases, including the conflation of Daubert issues with the requirements of class certification, which she argues has wrongly turned Daubert into an outcome-determinative mechanism that is hindering private antitrust enforcement (22:20).

The group then discusses potential solutions to this problem—including a different admissibility standard for economic testimony, increasing the use of court-appointed experts, and delaying the consideration of admissibility until the eve of trial—but finds none of them to be feasible. (30:15). Instead, they conclude that the solution lies in a return to the language of the Daubert trilogy and its goal of liberalizing the admissibility of expert testimony, which means keeping Daubert questions separate from the standards of class certification and rejecting efforts to treat the "fit" inquiry into a strict requirement of admissibility (40:05).

On this episode of Ruled by Reason, Emily Bridges of the Food and Agriculture Impact Project has a wide-ranging discussion with antitrust scholar Peter Carstensen about the role of information exchange in restricting competition in agricultural markets, focusing on how the DOJ's case against Agri-Stats addresses that threat.

After covering the oligopolistic nature of many agricultural markets (2:45), the two do a deep dive on why information exchange can be so harmful to competition (11:04). Professor Carstensen explains how the law on information exchange has evolved and how that history has led to unfortunate ambiguity about the applicable standard (17:10).

Professor Carstensen then explains why information exchange has been a particular problem in agricultural markets. He describes how recent cases in this area, including both private actions and the DOJ's case against the information aggregator, Agri-Stats, can play an important role in clarifying and strengthening enforcement against unjustified information exchanges (27:20). The discussion concludes with some thoughts about what we can expect from current trends in litigation over illegal information exchanges (48:50).

Emily Bridges is a Research Attorney for the LL.M. Program in Agricultural and Food Law at the University of Arkansas School of Law, working with the Food and Agriculture Impact Project. Emily received a JD and an LL.M. in Agricultural and Food Law from the University of Arkansas School of Law. The Food and Agriculture Impact Project works with faculty, students, organizations and other educational institutions to provide policy and legal research, analysis and education, supporting the farm and food community with educational resources.

Peter Carstensen is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Law School and a Senior Fellow and Advisory Board Member at AAI. He previously served in the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice. Professor Carstensen received the 2024 Alfred E. Kahn Award for Antitrust Achievement, presented by AAI in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field.

In this episode of Ruled by Reason, AAI President Randy Stutz sits down with Andy Green, the Senior Advisor for Fair and Competitive Markets at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The two discuss how Green found his way to the USDA after beginning his career as a corporate securities lawyer and developing policy expertise in the financial sector (2:46), the new role created for a competition advisor at USDA (9:25), USDA's tools for implementing President Biden's Executive Order on Promoting Competition (11:02), USDA's coordination with the USPTO to strengthen patent quality and promote competition in seeds markets (29:25), USDA's coordination with the Antitrust Division of the DOJ to enforce the unique standards of the Packers & Stockyards Act (35:57), the interplay between Sherman Act claims involving collusive price setting through intermediaries and the USDA's pricing transparency rulemakings (41:48), and issues in food and agriculture that the next president of the United States will inherit (44:28).

In this episode of Ruled by Reason, guest host Leslie Marx, the Robert A. Bandeen Distinguished Professor of Economics at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, sits down with Professor Florian Ederer to discuss his award-winning article, Common Ownership, Competition, and Top Management Incentives, 131 J. Pol. Econ 1294 (2023).

Professor Ederer is the Allen and Kelli Questrom Professor in Markets, Public Policy & Law at Boston University's Questrom School of Business. His article, co-authored with Professors Miguel Antón and Mireia Giné of the IESE Business School and Martin Schmalz of the University of Oxford Saïd Business School, won the 22nd Annual Jerry S. Cohen Memorial Fund Writing Award, presented on May 22 at AAI's 2024 Annual Policy Conference, New Thinking on the Antitrust Treatment of Collective Action: Organized Labor, Countervailing Power, and Algorithmic Price Setting. The article helps explain the existing empirical evidence on the anticompetitive effects of common ownership and meaningfully advances our understanding of the underlying theory behind the effects.

Among other things, Professor Marx and Professor Ederer discuss the theoretical and empirical background behind the theory of anticompetitive effects from common ownership (5:06), the mechanism by which common ownership actually leads to anticompetitive effects, notwithstanding that top managers and their delegees (rather than investors) control firms (12:13), and the implications of these findings for enforcers, policymakers, and future research (26:09).

Antitrust scholarship that is considered and selected for the Jerry S. Cohen Award reflects a concern for principles of economic justice, the dispersal of economic power, the maintenance of effective limitations upon economic power or the federal statutes designed to protect society from various forms of anticompetitive activity. Scholarship reflects an awareness of the human and social impacts of economic institutions upon individuals, small businesses and other institutions necessary to the maintenance of a just and humane society–values and concerns Jerry S. Cohen dedicated his life and work to fostering.

In this episode of Ruled by Reason, AAI goes international! Enforcers from the U.S., New Zealand, UK and Chile talk with Kathleen Bradish, Vice President and Director of Legal Advocacy, about their agencies' cross-border work to stop price-fixing cartels. Leah McCoy, Juan Correa, Louise Baner, and Grant Chamberlain, whose agencies are heading up the International Competition Network's Cartel Working Group, tell us about the important role of the CWG in advancing cross-border enforcement and give us a preview of some of CWG's exciting new projects. These include initiatives that reflect on-going, long-term concerns of international enforcers, like improving international cooperation and addressing obstruction. Other projects address emerging challenges like the specter of algorithmic collusion and the effect of complex networks of privacy laws on evidence collection. Our conversation concludes with Chile's and New Zealand's perspective on how ICN, and the Cartel Working Group in particular, can aid newer and smaller agencies.

On this episode of Ruled by Reason, we explore the ramifications of the Google search case from a unique perspective—the rival search engines that have been directly affected by Google's alleged monopolistic conduct. As the antitrust world eagerly awaits a decision this spring, AAI's Kathleen Bradish interviews DuckDuckGo's Kamyl Bazbaz, VP of Communications and Public Affairs, about his impressions of the recently argued case. This episode unpacks how Google's conduct, including "marathon" sized payments to OEMs to ensure default status, cuts rivals off from major access points and stymies customer choice. Bazbaz weighs in on the potential remedies that could help restore competition to search and improve customer's online experience.

On this episode of Ruled by Reason, AAI's Kathleen Bradish talks with Open Market's Sandeep Vaheesan and the American Economic Liberties Project's Erik Peinert about the pro-enforcement community's views on the draft Merger Guidelines recently released by the FTC and DOJ. This is a wide-ranging and in-depth discussion about how the proposed changes succeed in advancing better merger enforcement, where they fall short, and what beneficial modifications could be made to the final version.

Using each organization's comments to the draft Guidelines as the jumping off point, Bradish talks with Vaheesan and Peinert about the proper role of guidelines, the importance of structural presumptions, the differences between treatment of vertical and horizontal mergers, and the viability of the efficiencies defense. The discussion concludes with thoughts about how to maximize the practical impact and the long-term viability of the Guidelines.