• Selected
• Entire List

Abstract:
Economists have recognized the increasing role of network industries in our modern economy and have substantially advanced the understanding of network economics. This paper discusses how the special economic features of networks and, in particular, practices that networks adopt to enhance network benefits, requires a reconceptualization of modern antitrust analysis. The proposition is demonstrated by the example of several recent antitrust prosecutions of network practices where the economics of networks were largely ignored. The paper also discusses many cases in the antitrust canon that are more adequately analyzed when the network character of the practice is taken into account. The paper propose a reorganization of antitrust analysis to distinguish the fundamental economic analysis of network practices from the analysis of horizontal and vertical industrial practices.

Abstract:
For many decades, scholars have puzzled over why the market for judicial clerks has been characterized by increasingly early bidding, with interviews and offers extended at progressively early points in a student's law school career. An important article published recently by Jolls, Avery, Judge Posner and Alvin Roth reported the results of a study the authors conducted of judges and clerks documenting the many ways in which the market operated inefficiently. In their view, the clerk market corresponds to other markets studied chiefly by Roth that show timing disturbances claimed to be market failures. The authors recommended adoption of a modified matching program, similar to the program that matches medical residents with hospitals.

This paper reanalyzes the clerkship market and the other markets studied by Professor Roth from the standpoint of the costs and benefits of information acquisition. It shows that, far from market failure, the use of time as a currency in the market, represents the working out of market forces where other, more traditional terms of trade - in particular, price - are unavailable. The paper also shows that virtually all of the other markets studied by Roth that show timing peculiarities are characterized by restraints on the use of price to clear the market.

Abstract:
This paper describes behavior in labor market monopsonies relaxing the standard assumptions of a single monoposony wage offered to homogenous workers and addressing contexts where workers differ substantially in marginal productivity - ability and skill - and employers differ substantially in their provision of non-wage benefits above the monopsony wage. The paper illustrates the analysis with a description of the market for federal judicial law clerks and for medical residents, both of which, it will be claimed, are characterized by monopsony pricing of labor.

Abstract:
No abstract available.