In this chapter, we point out that private damage suits are not available to all victims of monopsonistic exploitation. In addition to the underpaid employees who have standing to sue, there are five groups that do not have standing: (1) employees who have been priced out of the market, (2) indirect suppliers of labor services, (3) umbrella employees, (4) suppliers of complementary inputs, and (5) buyers from the cartel.

This chapter deals with agreements among rivals not to hire one another’s employees. These agreements are known as “no-poaching” agreements and have been found in a number of labor markets. There have been numerous instances of employers agreeing to refrain from hiring one another’s employees. This, of course, depresses the demand for these employees and thereby puts a lid on compensation. In this chapter, we review some prominent cases involving (1) hardware and software engineers, (2) digital animators, (3) medical school faculty, (4) physical therapists, and (5) professional athletes.

For the most part, the suits filed by the Department of Justice have been resolved. Many of the private suits filed by the antitrust victims have been settled, but some are still pending. The chapter also explores the enforcement policies of the antitrust agencies which are provided in the Antitrust Guidance for Human Resource Professionals. We will also provide an extended analysis of no-poaching agreements in professional sports.

In this chapter, we present an economic model of employer collusion that explores the economic consequences of concerted efforts to depress wages and other forms of compensation. This chapter spells out the organizational challenges of building and implementing an employer cartel. It also examines the incentives to cheat on the cartel agreement. Our central focus is on the harm done to employees as well as the impact on social welfare.

In this chapter, we review an assortment of antitrust cases that alleged collusion on the wages paid and other terms of employment. These examples include hospital nurses, temporary duty nurses, college athletes, and highly talented college students. Finally, we explore the unintended consequences of collusion in the labor market – higher prices for consumers.

Monopsony is the label that Joan Robinson attached to a market in which a single employer faces a competitively structured supply of labor. For some reason, her early theoretical analysis, along with the insights of A. C. Piguo and J. R. Hicks, did not gain much traction. Recently, however, economists and policymakers have recognized the ill effects of monopsony and have offered some actions aimed at mitigating – if not eliminating – the monopsony problem. In our view, vigorous enforcement – both public and private – of the antitrust laws can play a large role in reducing the ill effects of monopsony power in the labor market.

In this chapter, we provide an overview of the Italian legislation on interlocking directorates and its enforcement in the last decade. In 2011, Italy introduced a specific anti-interlocking provision aimed at promoting competition in the banking, insurance, and financial sectors. After explaining why these personal ties may facilitate a collusive or quiet life equilibrium among competitors, we attempt to evaluate the effectiveness and limits of the Italian interlocking ban. Using the banking sector as a case study, we present data on the number of interlocking directorates that persist among the 25 largest banking groups operating in Italy at the end of 2018. The result of our study is that interlocking directorates among major Italian banks and banking groups seem to have disappeared. This is in line with empirical studies showing that, in the period following the entry into force of the Italian interlocking ban, bank lending rates fell, indicating more vigorous competition. We conclude our chapter by questioning whether the 2011 Italian interlocking ban has had any effect on the ownership structure of the relevant market players, for instance contributing to the disposal of minority and cross-shareholdings held by competing companies, and on the composition of their governing bodies.

In this final chapter, we emphasize the importance of competition in health care markets. The antitrust laws can be used to promote competition and thereby save consumers, health insurers, and the government billions of dollars. Although many policymakers call for a complete replacement of the US health care system, we offer remedies that can be implemented immediately.

In Economics 101, we learn that competition and competitive markets provide the biggest bang for the buck. Market imperfections, however, impair the competitive process and introduce inefficiencies that, in time, reduce the well-being of society. In this chapter, we discuss how the antitrust laws can be used to promote competition in the US health care sector, which could save consumers, health insurers, and the government billions of dollars. We provide a road map of the issues that we will discuss in later chapters.

In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith observed that “people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” As we will see, Smith’s warning has stood the test of time. Over 240 years later, we find such conspiracies among physicians, hospitals, pharmaceutical manufacturers, medical device producers, and health insurers. Their contrivances to raise prices add billions of dollars to our expenditures on health care. In this chapter, we introduce an economic model of a price-fixing cartel and discuss the deleterious effects on price, quantity, and social welfare. Using health care examples, we discuss collusion among physicians to deny staff privileges, noncompete agreements among hospitals, and market division schemes in the health insurance sector.

In recent years, the exercise of monopsony power has become more prevalent in labor markets, particularly through anticompetitive agreements among firms. No-poaching agreements are agreements among rival employers to refrain from hiring another firm’s employees. No-poaching agreements deprive employees of the competitive benefits that result from outside employer interest. Recent litigation in a variety of industries highlights the competitive concerns with no-poaching agreements. In this chapter, we explore the role of monopsony and buying power in no-poaching agreements and specifically review a no-poaching case involving the deans of two medical schools in North Carolina.

The chapter aims to serve as a conceptual sketch for the intricacies involved in autonomous algorithmic collusion, including the notion of concerted practices for cases that would otherwise elude the cartel prohibition. Stefan Thomas, a law scholar, starts by assessing how algorithms can influence competition in markets before dealing with the traditional criteria of distinction between explicit and tacit collusion, which might reveal a potential gap in the existing legal framework regarding algorithmic collusion. Finally, he analyses whether the existing cartel prohibition can be construed in a way that captures the phenomenon appropriately. This chapter shows how enforcement paradigms that hinge on descriptions of the inner sphere and conduct of human beings may collapse when applied to the effects precipitated by independent AI based computer agents.

Chapter 4 analyzes how mineral resources shape the state–capital relations in resource-rich regions. It argues that the symbiotic relationship between local state and resource capital can easily become collusive under the resource boom. Through studies of resource-related corruption cases, it demonstrates how the state’s regulation and interference in the resource sector create structural opportunities for rent seeking and collusion between the regulators and regulatees and how the resource windfalls turn local government departments into hotbeds for corruption. Through panel data analysis on the corruption rates of Chinese provinces, it testifies that resource-rich regions are indeed more corrupt than other regions. This chapter suggests that mineral resources amplify the existing loopholes in the Chinese political economic system and highlights the danger of local state capture by resource capital.

In this epilogue, we give a preview of the topics that we will develop in our next book on platform competition and platform regulation; we also summarize what this book has already taught us about these topics.

Regulation is not adjusting fast enough to changes in market structure due to unanticipated changes in technology and preferences. Regulators need to conduct diagnostics to assess the impact of abuse of market power, both ex ante (e.g. in the context of mergers) and ex post (e.g. in gauging profit margins). Both the empirical and the more conceptual assessments of the tools available to conduct these diagnostics are misleading if the market details are underestimated and/or the necessary accounting data are only partially available. The regulation of a vertically integrated monopoly participating in a competitive market in some of its production activities can lead to multiple benefits and risks. Benefits include the efficiency payoffs of the competition effect, the optimization of production cost synergies, and the incentive to innovate to remain competitive. Risks include a higher uncertainty on quality, social and political outcomes, and on the enforcement of access rules and prices. Whether the access prices should be based on the global price cap or the efficient component pricing rule approach is still up for debate. For two-sided markets, the regulator needs to account for the difference in valuation of the same service on the two sides of the market, interactions between the two sides, and the possible desirability of cross-subsidies to finance the common facility.

Which groups and organizations govern Japan? How do they cooperate and compete with each other? To what extent is the Japanese establishment connected with voluntary associations at popular levels? What are the characteristics of Japanese democracy? This chapter attempts to address these and other questions with a focus on the top layers of Japanese society. It is widely acknowledged that Japan’s establishment comprises three sectors – big business, parliament, and the public bureaucracy (ministries and agencies at the national level) – which are often referred to as a 'three-way deadlock'. In view of this, this chapter examines Japan's three-way deadlock, the emerging free-market political economy, community-level interest groups, political culture, the Fukushima nuclear disaster, relations with Korea and China, major media organizations, and deep-seated rifts that have opened up within elite structure.

Rapid, recent technological change has brought forward a new form of “algorithmic competition.” Firms can and do draw on supercharged connectivity, mass data collection, algorithmic processing, and automated pricing to engage in what can be called “robo-selling.” But algorithmic competition can also produce results that harm consumers. Notably, robo-selling may make anticompetitive collusion more likely, all things being equal. Additionally, the possibility of new forms of algorithmic price discrimination may also cause consumers to suffer. There are no easy solutions, particularly because algorithmic competition also promises significant benefits to consumers. As a result, this chapter sets forth some approaches to each of these issues, necessarily tentative, to address the changes that algorithmic competition is likely to bring.

This section introduction introduces the theoretical concept of “collusion” in language studies, with reference to James Comey’s testimonial of what it is like to be “caught in Trump’s web.” In spite of themselves, those interacting with Trump often find themselves playing along with their designated role when their turn arrives to make a verbal contribution. Scholars of language have referred to dynamics like these as “collusion,” a kind of joint action that, in language studies, concerns the often-unwitting ways in which people coordinate and synchronize aspects of what they are up to in a speech event, playing into one another’s script while achieving a loose consensus about what is going on. Conversational collusion characterizes Trump’s congenial relationships with Fox News hosts, as well as the apparent lack of resistance when Trump enlists those around a conference table in performances of fealty to him. The chapter concludes by foreshadowing the work of this section’s chapters, concerning ritualistic routines of male in-group talk, and the ways in which collusive laughter and applause seem to ratify Trump’s authority.