The Laboratorium : Antitrust and the Google Books Settlement: The Problem of Simultaneity

It’s another paper on the antitrust implications of the Google Book Search settlement, this being the second one out of Chicago. The author, Eric Fraser (a 2009 law school graduate, no less), zeroes in on the way in which the settlement simultaneously sets digital book prices across the whole market. As such, it can push the market to a different pricing position than it would be in free competition. I’d like to see a more detailed analysis of whether the new prices are stable against defection, but this is an interesting contribution to the discussion.