The Capitol Forum

The FTC recently proposed to ban noncompete agreements, and one of the most persistent advocates for this rule is Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director at the Open Markets Institute. Vaheesan leads Open Markets’ legal advocacy and research work, including its amicus program. Vaheesan works on a range of anti-monopoly topics, including antitrust law’s role in structuring labor markets and promoting fair...

The FTC recently issued a proposed rule to ban noncompete clauses, which the agency estimates could increase workers’ earnings by nearly $300 billion per year. Elizabeth Wilkins is the FTC’s Director of the Office of Policy Planning, and the lead on the proposed rule on noncompetes. The Office of Policy Planning assists the Commission to develop and implement long-range competition and consumer pr...

“In  Chokepoint Capitalism , scholar Rebecca Giblin and writer and activist Cory Doctorow argue we’re in a new era of “chokepoint capitalism,” with exploitative businesses creating insurmountable barriers to competition that enable them to capture value that should rightfully go to others. All workers are weakened by this, but the problem is especially well-illustrated by the plight of creative wo...

Lina M. Khan was sworn in as Chair of the Federal Trade Commission on June 15, 2021.  Prior to becoming head of the FTC, Khan was an Associate Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. She also previously served as counsel to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law, legal adviser to FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra, and legal director at the O...

Xbox CEO Phil Spencer discusses competition in the video game market.

Steven Salop is a Professor of Economics and Law (Emeritus) at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC, where he teaches antitrust law and economics. His research and consulting focuses on antitrust, competition and regulation. He has written numerous articles in various areas of antitrust and competition which take a modern “Post-Chicago” approach. He recently co-wrote a paper with...

Heather Vogell is a Propublica journalist currently investigating the  rental housing market.  Her recent article, “Rent Going Up? One Company’s Algorithm Could Be Why,” has resonated with citizens, antitrust enforcers, and policymakers across the country.

Neeva is an ads-free search engine that Sridhar co-founded after overseeing advertising at Google.  We discuss big tech, competition policy, and how his views on data have shifted since creating Neeva.

Daniel Sherwood, Energy Team Editor at the Capitol Forum, and his colleague Sharon Kelly discuss their investigation into the Natural Gas Liquids market, where they found indications that dominant producers in Appalachia are encouraging each other to keep prices high by producing less.

Lisa Epstein and Vikas Kumar from the Capitol Forum’s corporate investigations team discuss their reporting on the aggressive marketing tactics and sales strategies of Signify Health on the eve of its proposed $8 Billion acquisition by CVS.

Dr. Caffarra is a world-renowned competition economist with over two decades of experience. She’s served as a top advisor and expert before the European Commission and has provided guidance to multiple companies and agencies on mergers, conduct cases and regulatory issues.  In this episode of Second Request, Dr. Caffarra dives into the latest in European antitrust regulation and enforcement and vo...

Gilad Edelman is a senior writer for WIRED, covering the intersection of tech, politics, and law. Before that, he was executive editor of the Washington Monthly. He has a degree from Yale Law School. His recent article, “The Weak Argument Jeopardizing Tech Antitrust Legislation” is having an outsized impact on the conversation happening on Capitol Hill.

Niko Lusiani is the co-author of the Roosevelt Institute’s recently published paper , “Prices, Profits, and Power: An Analysis of 2021 Firm-Level Markups. How to understand and respond to inflation has become one of the central debates of this economic recovery. In “Prices, Profits, and Power: An Analysis of 2021 Firm-Level Markups,” Roosevelt’s Director of Macroeconomic Analysis, Mike Konczal, an...

U.S. Representative Buddy Carter is a pharmacist by trade and a lifelong resident of the First District of Georgia, which he represents. He recently wrote a letter to the FTC calling for an investigation into the ways Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) spike consumer drug prices and reduce access to life saving drugs. He discusses the monopoly problems that PBMs present and what the FTC and Congress...

Moe Tkacik is a Senior Fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project.  She’s a former journalist who has worked for the Wall Street Journal and Time, and she discusses the supply chain crisis behind the Baby Formula shortage and possible solutions to the problem. 

Maurice Stucke is the Douglas A. Blaze Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee and recently wrote Breaking Away: How to Regain Control Over Our Data, Privacy, and Autonomy. Breaking Away sounds a warning call alerting readers that their privacy and autonomy concerns are indeed warranted, and the remedies deserve far greater attention than they have received from our leading p...

His recent report , “To Stem the Tide of Rural Decline, Stop the Bank Merger Wave” is making its own waves in the antitrust community as regulators look to revamp the banking merger guidelines.  Basel shares with us how big the merger wave has been since the 1980s, why it happened, the effect it’s had on farmers, entrepreneurs, and rural communities, and his solution for fixing the problem.

Josh Kosman has been covering the financial industry for twenty-five years. He is a reporter for the New York Post, a former editor at Mergermarket.com and a former senior writer for The Deal and Buyouts Newsletter.  Josh also literally wrote the book on private equity – his The Buyout of America: How Private Equity is Destroying Jobs and Killing the American Economy, published in 2009, made a big...

Baron Public Affairs recently issued a report naming the top 10 antitrust super influencers, and they share their findings in this episode. Baron Public Affairs is a unique firm that “combines objective strategy development with groundbreaking research platforms” to help corporate clients “identify, understand and surmount” regulatory threats. They developed their list of antitrust super influence...

Shahid Naeem is a policy analyst at the American Economic Liberties Project and the author of a memo calling for the Department of Justice and Department of Transportation to block the merger between Spirit and Frontier.  

Tahir Amin is an attorney with more than 25 years of experience in intellectual property law and the co-founder of I-Mak, which seeks to build a more just and equitable medicine system for all via patent reform.

Jason Kint is CEO of Digital Content Next, the only trade association to exclusively serve the unique and diverse needs of high-quality digital content companies that manage trusted, direct relationships with consumers and marketers. Jason guides DCN’s diverse and powerful group of members — established brands such as The New York Times, Conde Nast and ESPN, and digital natives, such as Vox, Polit...

Ted Tatos is Managing Director of EconOne and co-author of the recent report, “Protecting the U.S. Postal Service from Amazon’s Anticompetitive Assault.”  In the conversation, we get into a lot of different aspects of Amazon’s ongoing effort to dominate the postal service.  A quick note: Ted’s report was funded by a conservative group called The Family Business Coalition, which includes small fami...

Matthew Jinoo Buck is a fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project and a first-year student at Yale Law School. His article in the American Prospect, “How America’s Supply Chains Got Railroaded” tells the history of how deregulation and consolidation gave us a railroad industry that is now a weak link in our supply chain.  He also tells how  the industry is more dangerous for workers and le...

Jeff Horwitz is a Wall Street Journal technology reporter who covers Facebook.  He is the lead reporter on the groundbreaking series of articles titled The Facebook Files.  The conversation covers myriad issues facing Facebook and we ask Jeff why, when facing choices between the public interest and growth on the platform, Mark Zuckerberg always chooses growth.