Writing in Truth on the Market, Professor Jonathan Barnett investigates several recent merger cases, and how regulator decisions might have harmed economic value, consumers, and employees.
In “False Positives, Real Casualties: The High Price of Populist Antitrust” (May 6, 2026), he explores four antitrust matters:
JetBlue-Spirit
Illumina-Grail
Amazon-iRobot
Qualcomm-Autotalks
Among the conclusions, Professor Barnett argues the following: “This rush to intervene reflects too little attention to the error costs of unwarranted action, especially in cases involving nascent markets, as in Illumina/Grail; financially precarious targets, as in Amazon-iRobot and, to a lesser extent, JetBlue-Spirit; or small acquisitions, as in Qualcomm-Autotalks. Those costs seem to have been overlooked by regulators as they challenged transactions based on largely conjectural theories of anticompetitive harm.”
The column should offer evidence-based insights applicable to policymakers, regulators, scholars, students and anyone interested in antitrust and competition topics.