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 Coinciding with the release of the paper, ICLE, in conjunction with George Mason University's Mercatus Center, will be hosting a conference in Washington, DC, next week on the interchange fee debate. For more information on the conference and to register, please click here. The conference, to be held on June 9th from 8:30 am to 1:00 pm at the Willard InterContinental Hotel, will cover both the politics and regulation of interchange fees, as well as the underlying economics of card networks and the place of the interchange fee in those networks.
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We are pleased to announce the first paper in our 2011 Antitrust and Consumer Protection White Paper Series, "If Search Neutrality is the Answer, What's the Question?" by Geoffrey A. Manne of Lewis & Clark Law School and ICLE, and Joshua D. Wright of George Mason Law School & Department of Economics and ICLE.
In this paper we evaluate both the economic and non-economic costs and benefits of search bias. In Part I we define search bias and search neutrality, terms that have taken on any number of meanings in the literature, and survey recent regulatory concerns surrounding search bias. In Part II we discuss the economics and technology of search. In Part III we evaluate the economic costs and benefits of search bias. We demonstrate that search bias is the product of the competitive process and link the search bias debate to the economic and empirical literature on vertical integration and the generally-efficient and pro-competitive incentives for a vertically integrated firm to discriminate in favor of its own content. Building upon this literature and its application to the search engine market, we conclude that neither an ex ante regulatory restriction on search engine bias nor the imposition of an antitrust duty to deal upon Google would benefit consumers. In Part V we evaluate the frequent claim that search engine bias causes other serious, though less tangible, social and cultural harms. As with the economic case for search neutrality, we find these non-economic justifications for restricting search engine bias unconvincing, and particularly susceptible to the well-known Nirvana Fallacy of comparing imperfect real world institutions with romanticized and unrealistic alternatives.
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International Center for Law and Economics' Executive Director Geoffrey Manne was recently interviewed on Verizon's acquisition of spectrum from cable operators by Marketplace's Tech Report. The report, which aired Tuesday, December 28, explores Version's various deals with cable companies to route around political blockages and acquire much needed spectrum. However, the Department of Justice recently decided to launch an antitrust invesitgation into the deals just days after AT&T dropped its bid for T-Mobile.
Manne injected some reality into the discussion:
In a sort of perfect world, you hear people say well, the spectrum that the cable companies own that they're not using, smaller competitors should be buying that so they can compete with AT&T and Verizon and others. Well, that's a nice idea, I guess, but the smaller companies aren't buying it and Verizon snapped up that spectrum so that they could continue to provide the level of service that they'd like to.
Listen to the embedded player below or head to the web site to hear the entire segment. |
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Philadelphia civil courts have come under fire for attracting and favoring plaintiffs from outside the city at the expense of its consumers and businesses. A new study, entitled "Are Plaintiffs Drawn to Philadelphia’s Civil Courts? An Empirical Examination," issued by the International Center for Law & Economics and authored by Professor of Law and Economics at George Mason University School of Law, Joshua D. Wright, finds evidence that Philadelphia civil courts are indeed marked by structural biases that attract plaintiffs with little or no connection to the city, leading to disproportionate litigation and verdicts relative to other courts.
Using data from the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, Professor Wright compares filing trends and case outcomes in Philadelphia to the rest of Pennsylvania and other representative state courts. As explained in greater depth in the paper, Philadelphia courts, when measured against non-Philadelphia Pennsylvania state courts and federal district courts, exhibit marked and significant dissimilarities supporting an inference that something intrinsically unusual is occurring in Philadelphia. Philadelphia courts host an especially large number of cases, Philadelphia courts have a larger docket than expected, Philadelphia plaintiffs are less likely to settle than other non-Philadelphia Pennsylvania plaintiffs, and Philadelphia plaintiffs are disproportionately likely to prefer jury trials. These findings are consistent with a conclusion that Philadelphia courts demonstrate a marked and meaningful preference for plaintiffs.
Here is the full report. Please
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if you are interested in speaking with Professor Wright about the report or would like a comment on the report or the pending legislation. |
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Updated Report with Appendix
Appendix only
Late last year the International Center for Law and Economics published a study finding that Philadelphia civil courts, and the Philadelphia Complex Litigation Center (PCLC) in particular, are marked by structural biases that likely attract plaintiffs with little or no connection to the city, leading to relatively disproportionate litigation and verdicts. Today we release a supplemental appendix to the study, also authored by Professor of Law and Economics at George Mason University School of Law, Joshua D. Wright, presenting further research demonstrating that, indeed, a substantial fraction of plaintiffs with cases pending at the Philadelphia Complex Litigation Center seem to have have no discernible or relevant connection to Philadelphia or to Pennsylvania.
Removing cases that were identified as lacking sufficient data, 1,370 cases were analyzed and coded. From this sample the plaintiff’s home address was identified in 1,355 cases. Of these, 638 cases had electronically filed complaints yielding the alleged location of injury in 369 cases.
In total, it was found that:
- Of the 1,357 cases, 913 (67.2%) were brought by plaintiffs who live out-of-state without any apparent connection to Pennsylvania or Philadelphia.
- Only 180 cases (13.3%) reveal plaintiffs who live in or allege injury in Philadelphia.
- The most substantial case types where the plaintiffs were overwhelmingly out-of-state are hormone therapy, denture adhesive cream, and Paxil birth defect cases.
- Although most or all of the companies involved in these cases do business in Philadelphia and a few have some sort of administrative offices there, the vast majority of defendants do not have their principal place of business in Philadelphia or even in Pennsylvania. It is unlikely that venue was moved to the PCLC in most or any of the cases.
This preliminary analysis supports the conclusion that Philadelphia courts demonstrate a meaningful preference for plaintiffs by coaxing “business” from other courts and providing a unique combination of advantages for plaintiffs.
Here is the full report with the new appendix attached; the Appendix by itself is available here. Please contact us if you are interested in speaking with Professor Wright about the report or would like a comment on the report or the pending legislation. |
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