James C. Cooper

George Mason University | GMU · School of Law

In 1993, the Supreme Court established a new standard for the admissibility of expert evidence with its decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals. Although whether Daubert actually has increased the reliability of expert evidence remains an open question, empirical research generally suggests that Daubert has increased the judicial role in...

Most professions in the USA are regulated by boards composed of industry practitioners, who in their official roles routinely engage in anticompetitive conduct. Until the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners v FTC, many believed that such conduct was beyond the reach of antitrust enforcement as long as...

This comment is submitted in response to the European Commission’s (EC’s) public consultation on the Regulatory Environment for Platforms, Online Intermediaries, Data, Cloud Computing, and the Collaborative Economy.The comment addresses: (1) concerns that the EC’s survey methodology and design is not conducive to generating reliable and policy-rele...

Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act gives the FTC an undefined mandate to prosecute ‘unfair methods of competition’. For nearly 100 years, the FTC has searched tirelessly for the meaning of this amorphous concept. Since 1992, the FTC has continued to define Section 5 through a series of consent decrees. Absent any external constrain...

This comment on the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) draft Strategic Plan FY 2014-FY 2018 addresses two areas that the Commission should consider. First, the Commission should integrate economic analysis into its consumer protection mission to the same degree that it has into its competition mission. Such integration will aid the Commission in allo...

Because a patient must have a prescription to purchase contact lenses, prescribing eye care professional (ECPs) have incentives to take advantage of locked-in patients. I use the Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act (FCLCA) – which outlawed lock-in – as a natural experiment to perform (to my knowledge) the first empirical examination of the effec...

Behavioral economics (BE) examines the implications for decision-making when actors suffer from biases documented in the psychological literature. This article considers how such biases affect regulatory decisions. The article posits a simple model of a regulator who serves as an agent to a political overseer. The regulator chooses a policy that ac...

The Twenty-first Amendment repealed prohibition, but granted the states broad power to regulate the distribution and sale of alcohol to consumers within their borders. Pursuant to this authority, states have established a complex web of regulations that limit the ability of beer, wine, and liquor producers to control the distribution of their produ...

In this Article we focus upon an area in which greater convergence of U.S. policy with the practice of many foreign countries is long overdue: the treatment of public policies that suppress competition. Whereas the European Union (“EU”) and numerous other jurisdictions have taken strong measures to limit restraints imposed by national government au...

The Twenty-first Amendment repealed prohibition, but granted the states broad power to regulate the distribution and sale of alcohol to consumers within their borders. Pursuant to this authority, states have established a complex web of regulations that limit the ability of beer, wine, and liquor producers to control the distribution of their produ...

This paper explores fundamental policy trade-offs between health information technology (HIT) and regulatory protection of health information privacy and data security. The paper argues that barriers to HIT development and adoption have been complex, including not just misaligned payment incentives – addressed by the ARRA – but significant implemen...

In the Autumn 2005 issue of Competition Policy International, the authors published an article on the antitrust policy implications of the theoretical and empirical literature on vertical restraints. In an accompanying comment, Professor Ralph Winter claims that the authors are advocating an enforcement standard that in any particular case would ig...

Competition authorities have several tools at their disposal in crafting a competition policy. Most prominent are litigation and merger review. A less-recognized but often effective tool, however, is "competition advocacy." Broadly, competition advocacy is using persuasion, rather than coercion, to convince government actors to pursue policies that...

are preliminary materials circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comment. The analyses and conclusions set forth are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of other members of the Bureau of Economics, other Commission staff, or the Commission itself. Upon request, single copies of the paper will be provided. Referenc...

We discuss Professor Jeffrey Church's report to the European Commission in 2004 on the effects of vertical restraints and mergers. Although thorough and accurate, the report could be misinterpreted by practitioners, as it does not emphasize that market power is only a necessary condition for harm to competition, and that most vertical mergers that...

We explore a hypothesis that a change in investment behaviour among international oil companies (IOC) towards the end of the 1990s had long-lived effects on OPEC strategies, and on oil price formation. Coordinated investment constraints were imposed on the IOCs through financial market pressures for improved short-term profitability in the wake of...

The legality of nonprice vertical practices in the U.S. is determined by their likely competitive effects. An optimal enforcement rule combines evidence with theory to update prior beliefs, and specifies a decision that minimizes the expected loss. Because the welfare effects of vertical practices are theoretically ambiguous, optimal decisions depe...

In recent years divergence between United States ("US") and European Union ("EU") competition policy has garnered a lot of attention. One particular area where these differences are evident is the treatment of vertical restraints. In the USA, an antitrust plaintiff must show that a vertical agreement is likely to harm competition - that is, reduce...

Until theory can be used to determine how likely it is that a restraint will lead to an anticompetitive outcome, decision makers will be left with a considerable amount of uncertainty.

The legality of nonprice vertical practices in the U.S. is determined by their likely competitive effects. An optimal enforcement rule combines evidence with theory to update prior beliefs, and specifies a decision that minimizes the expected loss. Because the welfare effects of vertical practices are theoretically ambiguous, optimal decisions depe...

This article was prepared as part of a recent symposium celebrating the Ninetieth Anniversary of the founding of the Federal Trade Commission. In addition, Fall 2004 marks the Thirtieth Anniversary of a pivotal moment in the establishment of the modern advocacy program at the FTC, Chairman Lewis Engman's speech on the economic burden that inefficie...

I examine online and offline prices for popular disposable contact lenses. Idiosyncratic features of this market make it likely that offline firms set prices on the assumption that most of their customers are unaware of online prices. Consistent with lower online search costs, offline prices are more dispersed and approximately 11 percent higher th...

Of all fields of regulation in the United States, antitrust law relies most heavily on economics to inform the design and application of legal rules. When drafting antitrust statutes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Congress anticipated that courts and enforcement agencies would formulate and adjust operational standards to account for ne...