Error Costs in Digital Markets

Throughout the world, the rule against price fixing is competition law's most important and least controversial prohibition. Yet there is far less consensus than meets the eye on what constitutes price fixing, and prevalent understandings conflict with the teachings of oligopoly theory that supposedly underlie modern competition policy. This book offers a fresh, in-depth exploration of competition law's horizontal agreement requirement, presents a systematic analysis of how best to address the problem of coordinated oligopolistic price elevation, and compares the resulting direct approach to the orthodox prohibition. The book elaborates the relevant benefits and costs of potential solutions, investigates how coordinated price elevation is best detected in light of the error costs associated with different types of proof, and examines appropriate sanctions. Existing literature devotes remarkably little attention to these key subjects and instead concerns itself with limiting penalties to certain sorts of interfirm communications. Challenging conventional wisdom, the book shows how this circumscribed view is less well grounded in the statutes, principles, and precedents of competition law than is a more direct, functional proscription. More important, by comparison to the communications-based prohibition, the book explains how the direct approach targets situations that involve both greater social harm and less risk of chilling desirable behavior—and is also easier to apply.

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Error Costs & IP Law

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.2212256 ◽

2013 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Joseph Scott Miller

Keyword(s):

Ip Law ◽

Error Costs

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Error Costs, Legal Standards of Proof, and Statistical Significance

Supreme Court Economic Review ◽

10.1086/694607 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 25 (1) ◽

pp. 1-57 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Michelle M. Burtis ◽

Jonah B. Gelbach ◽

Bruce H. Kobayashi

Keyword(s):

Statistical Significance ◽

Legal Standards ◽

Standards Of Proof ◽

Error Costs

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A Perception-Based Fuzzy Route Planing Algorithm for Autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicles

Unmanned Systems ◽

10.1142/s2301385018500073 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 06 (04) ◽

pp. 251-266

Author(s):

Phillip J. Durst ◽

Christopher T. Goodin ◽

Cindy L. Bethel ◽

Derek T. Anderson ◽

Daniel W. Carruth ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Path Planning ◽

Urban Area ◽

Route Planning ◽

Unmanned Ground Vehicles ◽

Membership Functions ◽

Ground Vehicles ◽

Ground Vehicle ◽

Sensor Error ◽

Planning Algorithm ◽

Error Costs

Path planning plays an integral role in mission planning for ground vehicle operations in urban areas. Determining the optimum path through an urban area is a well-understood problem for traditional ground vehicles; however, in the case of autonomous unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), additional factors must be considered. For an autonomous UGV, perception algorithms rather than platform mobility will be the limiting factor in operational capabilities. For this study, perception was incorporated into the path planning process by associating sensor error costs with traveling through nodes within an urban road network. Three common perception sensors were used for this study: GPS, LIDAR, and IMU. Multiple set aggregation operators were used to blend the sensor error costs into a single cost, and the effects of choice of aggregation operator on the chosen path were observed. To provide a robust path planning ability, a fuzzy route planning algorithm was developed using membership functions and fuzzy rules to allow for qualitative route planning in the case of generalized UGV performance. The fuzzy membership functions were then applied to several paths through the urban area to determine what sensors were optimized in each path to provide a measure of the UGV’s performance capabilities. The research presented in this paper shows the impacts that sensing/perception has on ground vehicle route planning by demonstrating a fuzzy route planning algorithm constructed by using a robust rule set that quantifies these impacts.

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Error Costs, Legal Standards of Proof and Statistical Significance

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.2956471 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Michelle Burtis ◽

Jonah B. Gelbach ◽

Bruce H. Kobayashi

Keyword(s):

Statistical Significance ◽

Legal Standards ◽

Standards Of Proof ◽

Error Costs

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Antitrust Error Costs

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.3853282 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Herbert Hovenkamp

Keyword(s):

Error Costs

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Through the Anti-Monopoly Lens: What Constitutes ‘Unfairly High Patent Pricing’ in China?

GRUR International ◽

10.1093/grurint/ikaa085 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 69 (8) ◽

pp. 823-846

Author(s):

Yuan Hao

Keyword(s):

Dynamic Efficiency ◽

Theoretical Possibility ◽

Dynamic Competition ◽

Rule Of Reason ◽

Dominant Market Position ◽

Per Se ◽

The Right ◽

Error Costs ◽

Chinese Court ◽

Critical Link

Abstract This article proposes that a patentee’s unilateral pricing of proprietary technology should be presumed legal per se under Sec. 55 IPR immunity framework provided by the Anti-Monopoly Law, unless a plaintiff overcomes all three of the following hurdles with actual evidence: (i) the patentee enjoys a dominant market position; (ii) such pricing constitutes de facto refusal to deal with or significant ‘margin squeeze’ for subsequent or follow-on innovators; and (iii) the constructive refusal or ‘margin squeeze’ would likely foreclose dynamic competition. This seemingly high evidentiary burden is justified by three cumulative resources: (i) the very patent mechanism in facilitating innovation, including a solid promise of supra-competitive profit through the right to lawfully exclude competition by imitation, and thus the instigation of a virtuous circle of dynamic competition through pivoting on the critical link of competition by substitution; (ii) the prevalent cautious attitude in sister jurisdictions when dealing with the concept; and (iii) the inevitable limitations of antitrust law, manifested in the administrative and error costs due to lack of proper information and economic analysis methodologies on dynamic efficiency. Through a detailed illustration with six specific scenarios, we see in a quasi-quantitative way that the actual likelihood of unilateral foreclosure on dynamic competition, even in the case of a monopolist patentee, is extremely low despite the existence of a theoretical possibility. Facing this meager likelihood and information deficiency, it would be unwise for a Chinese court to incur enormous costs of searching for a possibility in every case, with the mere guidance of a vague rule-of-reason framework.

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