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ICLE comments to the Federal Reserve on a proposal to amend Regulation II, which caps the fees that can be charged to merchants for processing debit-card transactions, were cited in a story by Payments Dive.  You can read the full piece here.

ICLE was cited in a press release about the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ judgment in the In Re Bystolic antitrust litigation, in which ICLE had filed an amicus brief jointly with the New Civil Liberties Alliance that took the ultimately victorious side . You can read full piece here.

The Second Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal, deciding Plaintiffs failed to state a claim on which relief could be granted. NCLA celebrates this correct antitrust liability ruling alongside amicus co-signer, the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE).

ICLE’s amicus in Gilead Science’s appeal before the California Supreme Court was cited in an article about the case in National Law Review. You can read the full piece here.

Gilead quickly filed an appeal in late February, requesting that the California justices review the appellate court decision. Various organizations filed amici briefs in support of Gilead, including but not limited to, the Washington Legal Foundation, the International Center for Law & Economics, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, the American Tort Reform Association, the Personal Care Products Council, the American Coatings Association, the American Chemistry Counsel, and the Atlantic Legal Foundation. On May 1, the California Supreme Court granted Gilead’s request to review the decision.

ICLE Director of Law & Economics Programs Gus Hurwitz was quoted by Sociobits in a story about the lawsuit the company filed challenging a recently passed law that would force its divestiture from Chinese-based ByteDance. You can read the full piece here.

Gus Hurwitz, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School, who is not involved in the case, stated that ByteDance will likely first seek a court order to temporarily block the federal law from taking effect. This initial decision on whether to grant a preliminary injunction could be crucial, as without it, ByteDance would have to sell TikTok before the broader case could be decided.

ICLE Director of Law & Economics Programs Gus Hurwitz was cited by West Island Blog in a story about the lawsuit the company filed challenging a recently passed law that would force its divestiture from Chinese-based ByteDance. You can read the full piece here.

Meanwhile, opinions swing between individuals like Gus Hurwitz, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School, who believes courts will primarily defer to Congress, and Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, who expects TikTok’s lawsuit to be successful.

ICLE Director of Law & Economics Programs Gus Hurwitz was quoted by CNBC in a story about the lawsuit the company filed challenging a recently passed law that would force its divestiture from Chinese-based ByteDance. You can read the full piece here.

The D.C. Circuit Court could agree to hear the case on an expedited timeframe, meaning a completed opinion could be delivered before a sale is required, said Gus Hurwitz, senior fellow and academic director of the Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.

Hurwitz said TikTok and ByteDance will likely request a stay of the law or a preliminary injunction with the court, effectively putting the law on hold until a decision is reached.

“If the court does not put such a stay in place, I think that’s a really bad sign for TikTok and ByteDance,” Hurwitz told CNBC in an interview. “That’s a suggestion that the court thinks the law has a very strong chance of being upheld.”

TikTok could also file another lawsuit on behalf of its users, which Hurwitz said would strengthen the company’s First Amendment argument and, if the courts view it under that lens, make it harder for Congress to prevail.

“This is one of those truly hard issues on both sides sort of cases,” Hurwitz said.

…As of now, TikTok can continue to operate. Hurwitz said the company is showing little inclination to sell or or stop doing business in the U.S. until the last possible minute.

“This is going to be a while,” he said.

ICLE Chief Economist Brian Albrecht was cited in article at City Journal about the forthcoming book The War on Prices, to which he contributed a chapter. You can read the full piece here.

My new edited volume, The War on Prices: How Popular Misconceptions about Inflation, Prices, and Value Create Bad Policy, catalogues politicians’ faulty theories about inflation’s causes. Scholars Pierre Lemieux, Bryan Cutsinger, Brian Albrecht, David Beckworth, and Stan Veuger document that inflation wasn’t the product of greedy corporations, aggressive wage demands, or even primarily supply-shocks and bottlenecks. The best explanation was overly stimulatory macroeconomic policy.

ICLE Director of Law & Economics Programs Gus Hurwitz was quoted by Báo Giao Thông in a story about the lawsuit the company filed challenging a recently passed law that would force its divestiture from Chinese-based ByteDance. You can read the full piece here.

ICLE Chief Economist Brian Albrecht was cited by Ryan Bourne in his Subtack newsletter The War on Prices about Brian’s chapter in Ryan’s forthcoming book of the same name. You can read the full post here.

The economics of this are pretty simple. As Brian Albrecht explains in his chapter in The War on Prices, corporations are disciplined in what they can charge by both competition and customers’ willingness and ability to pay. If one firm decides to jack up prices, they’d not only risk losing customers to their rivals, but any existing consumer paying the higher price would have lower money balances left over to spend on other goods and services, reducing demand and so prices for other items. Hence, some companies just unilaterally deciding to charge higher prices can’t cause economy??wide inflation — a sustained rise in the general price level — because, absent higher overall spending, other prices will fall.