PODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXIII: Antitrust

"Hexapodia" Is the Key Insight: by Noah Smith & Brad DeLong

Key Insights:

* There are a great many reasons to fear that the rise of industrial and post-industrial economic concentration is doing serious harm to the market economy’s (limited) ability to function as an efficiency-promoting societal calculating mechanism.

* None of these have yet been nailed down.

* But the neo-Brandeisians will have their chance because of the striking misbehavior of the tech platforms, which have thought too much about how to glue their users’ eyeballs to the screen so they can be sold ads and too little about how to make users and others happy and comfortable with their business models.

* That is, the neo-Brandeisians will have their chance to the extent that they are not blocked by justices who know little of the law and less of economics.

* Hexapodia!

References:

* Autor, Dorn, Katz, Patterson, & Van Reenen (2017): Concentrating on the Fall of the Labor Share <https://economics.mit.edu/files/12544>

* Autor, Dorn, Katz, Patterson, & Van Reenen (2017): The Fall of the Labor Share & the Rise of Superstar Firms <https://economics.mit.edu/files/12979>

* Azar, Marinescu & Steinbaum (2017): Labor Market Concentration <https://www.nber.org/papers/w24147>

* Berger, Herkenhoff, & Mongey (2019): Labor Market Power <https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w25719/w25719.pdf>

* Blonigen & Pierce (2016): Evidence for the Effects of Mergers on Market Power & Efficiency <https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/feds/2016/files/2016082pap.pdf>

* De Loecker, Eeckhout, and Mongey (2021): Quantifying Market Power & Business Dynamism in the Macroeconomy <https://www.nber.org/papers/w28761>

* De Loecker, Eeckhout, & Unger (2019): The Rise of Market Power & the Macroeconomic Implications <https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/feds/2016/files/2016082pap.pdf>

* Gutierrez & Philippon (2016): Investment-less Growth: An Empirical Investigation <http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~tphilipp/papers/QNIK.pdf>

* Noah Smith (2021): The Economists' Revolt <https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-economists-revolt>

&, of course:

* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://books.google.com/books?id=fCCWWgZ7d6UC>

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