I wish I could confidently say that economics and law will drive antitrust in 2023, but I cannot. Tech antitrust cases pursued in the US and Europe in 2021 and 2022 have been poorly conceived and built on weak factual and economic foundations. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) leadership is seeking to turn the agency away from its traditions of careful analytical and legal work and toward making it a general business regulator that would make decisions based on subjective notions of fairness and poorly defined goals for competition. And Congress has gotten deeply involved, pressing the US toward a European-style regime of government control of consumers and businesses.

So my predictions for the year 2023 are based on the economics and psychology of politics, not the economics of consumer preferences and industry supply.

Read Dr. Jamison’s complete blog post at AEI.