In the United States, antitrust law is a collection of mostly federal laws that regulate the conduct and organization of businesses in order to promote competition and prevent unjustified monopolies. The three main U.S. antitrust statutes are the Sherman Act of 1890, the Clayton Act of 1914, and the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914. These acts serve three major functions. First, Section 1 of the Sherman Act prohibits price fixing and the operation of cartels, and prohibits other collusive practices that unreasonably restrain trade. Second, Section 7 of the Clayton Act restricts the mergers and acquisitions of organizations that may substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly. Third, Section 2 of the Sherman Act prohibits monopolization.
Vernon Lomax Smith is an American economist who is currently a professor of economics and law at Chapman University. He was formerly the McLellan/Regent’s Professor of Economics at the University of Arizona, a professor of economics and law at George Mason University, and a board member of the Mercatus Center. Along with Daniel Kahneman, Smith won the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to behavioral economics and his work in the field of experimental economics, which helped establish “laboratory experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis, especially in the study of alternative market mechanisms”.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction over federal civil antitrust law enforcement with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. The agency is headquartered in the Federal Trade Commission Building in Washington, DC.
William Jack Baumol was an American economist. He was a professor of economics at New York University, Academic Director of the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He was a prolific author of more than eighty books and several hundred journal articles. He is the namesake of the Baumol effect.
Hal Ronald Varian is Chief Economist at Google and holds the title of emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley where he was founding dean of the School of Information. Varian is an economist specializing in microeconomics and information economics.
Kenneth George "Ken" Binmore, is an English mathematician, economist, and game theorist, a Professor Emeritus of Economics at University College London (UCL) and a Visiting Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Bristol. As a founder of modern economic theory of bargaining, he made important contributions to the foundations of game theory, experimental economics, evolutionary game theory and analytical philosophy. He took up economics after holding the Chair of Mathematics at the London School of Economics. The switch has put him at the forefront of developments in game theory. His other interests include political and moral philosophy, decision theory, and statistics. He has written over 100 scholarly papers and 14 books.
Auction theory is a branch of applied economics that deals with how bidders act in auctions and researches how the features of auctions incentivise predictable outcomes. Auction theory is a tool used to inform the design of real-world auctions. Sellers use auction theory to raise higher revenues while allowing buyers to procure at a lower cost. The confluence of the price between the buyer and seller is an economic equilibrium. Auction theorists design rules for auctions to address issues that can lead to market failure. The design of these rulesets encourages optimal bidding strategies in a variety of informational settings. The 2020 Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded to Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson "for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats."
Sir Richard William Blundell CBE FBA is a British economist and econometrician.
Susan Carleton Athey is an American economist. She is the Economics of Technology Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to joining Stanford, she has been a professor at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Robert Butler "Bob" Wilson, Jr. is an American economist and the Adams Distinguished Professor of Management, Emeritus at Stanford University. He was jointly awarded the 2020 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, together with his Stanford colleague and former student Paul R. Milgrom, "for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats". Two more of his students, Alvin E. Roth and Bengt Holmström, are also Nobel Laureates in their own right.
The Barcelona School of Economics (BSE) is an internationally renowned institute for research and graduate education in economics, finance, data science, and the social sciences located in Barcelona, Spain.
Franklin Marvin Fisher was an American economist. He taught economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1960 to 2004.
Introduction to Economic Analysis is a university microeconomics textbook by Caltech Professor Preston McAfee. It is available free of charge under Creative Commons license ; under this "license that requires attribution, users can pick and choose chapters or integrate with their own material".
William Breit (1933–2011) was an American economist, mystery novelist, and professional comedian. Breit was born in New Orleans. He received his undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of Texas and his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 1961. He was an Assistant and associate professor of economics at Louisiana State University (1961–1965) On the recommendation of Milton Friedman he was interviewed and hired at the University of Virginia where he was Associate Professor and Professor of Economics (1965–1983). He returned to his San Antonio as the E.M. Stevens Distinguished Professor of Economics at Trinity University in 1983 and retired as the Vernon F. Taylor Distinguished Professor Emeritus in 2002. He is considered an expert in the history of economic thought and anti-trust economics. He established the Nobel Laureate Lecture Series at Trinity University and is most notable as a mystery novelist where their murder mysteries are solved by applying basic economic principles.
Jesse William Markham was an American economist. Markham was best known for his work on antitrust policy, price theory and industrial organization. Markham was the Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (HBS), and the former chief economist to the Federal Trade Commission.
Big Tech, also known as the Tech Giants or Tech Titans, are the largest IT companies in the world. The concept of Big Tech is similar to the grouping of dominant companies in other sectors. It typically refers to the Big Five United States tech companies: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft; or the Magnificent Seven, which includes Nvidia and Tesla. Big Tech can also include Chinese companies such as Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi (BATX).
Ilya R. Segal is an economist who is currently Roy and Betty Anderson Professor in the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His research focuses on microeconomic theory, particularly contract theory, mechanism design and auction design. His research interests include the design of competition policy, property rights, contracts, auctions, and other economic mechanisms. Segal has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and member of the Toulouse Network for Information Technology. His other awards include Compass Lexecon prize for “the most significant contribution to the understanding and implementation of competition policy,” a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and a Hoover Fellowship.
Estelle Cantillon is a Belgian economist. She is currently FNRS Research Director at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, a position she has held since 2016. Cantillon is also an associated researcher at the Toulouse School of Economics. Cantillon currently serves as the Joint Managing Editor at the Economic Journal and is an associate editor at the RAND Journal of Economics. She also holds appointments as a member of WZB Berlin's Advisory Board, research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and committee member of Rethinking Belgium, “Matching in Practice” research network, and the European Economic Association. She has previously taught at Harvard Business School, Harvard Kennedy School, and Yale University. Cantillon's professional interests are microeconomics, market design, industrial organization and environmental economics. Her research typically combines theory and data. Currently, her research focuses on carbon emissions markets, the design of electricity wholesale markets, and climate transition policies. She is fluent in French and English and has passive knowledge of Dutch, German, and Spanish.
Michael A. Schwarz is an economist who specializes in marketplace design and decision-making theory. He is known especially for his role in designing advertising auctions for technology companies.
Philip A. Haile is an economist and the Ford Foundation Professor of Economics at Yale University.
