As in previous years (see 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024), here are the world’s most downloaded antitrust and competition law (related) articles posted on SSRN during the course of 2025.
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1. Adaptive Regulation
by Thibault Schrepel
Amsterdam Law & Technology Institute, Working Paper (1770 downloads)
What is adaptive regulation, and why does it matter? Focusing on the Digital Markets Act and other regulations, this article explains how regulation can be designed to adapt over time to technological change and market dynamics.
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2. Restrictions by object under Article 101(1) TFEU: from dark art to administrable framework
by Pablo Ibáñez Colomo
43 Yearbook of European Law 224 (1567 downloads)
This article presents the principles underpinning the approach followed by the Court of Justice when evaluating whether a practice has, as its object, the restriction of competition. It discusses, inter alia, what an authority (or claimant) needs to prove and explains what the evaluation of the economic and legal context involves in concrete terms. The analysis shows that the ECJ’s overall approach is both predictable (in the sense that the notion has clear and finite boundaries) and administrable (in the sense that the said approach places adequate and workable demands on authorities and claimants). It appears, on the other hand, that there are ways in which some principles underpinning the case law could be streamlined and made more explicit so as to guarantee the uniform application of Article 101(1) TFEU across the EU at a time when private enforcement is on the rise.
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3. A Modern Economic Approach to Antitrust Law: Industrial Organization Decision Theory and Antitrust
by Steven C. Salop
Georgetown University Law Center Research Paper Forthcoming (1347 downloads)
This revised complete version of the monograph has an Introduction and 6 chapters covering Economic Analytic Framework; Decision Theory Analysis; Collusive Conduct; Exclusionary Conduct; Horizontal Mergers; and Vertical Mergers. The monograph reviews and explains the modern economic analysis of anticompetitive conduct and how this analysis provides a modern economic approach to antitrust law. A key theme of the monograph is the role of decision theory in synthesizing industrial organization economic analysis and antitrust law. Decision theory is a key theme because of its role in intermediating the double helix of economic analysis and legal standards. (…)
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4. No Exit
by Brian J. Broughman, Matthew Wansley & Samuel Weinstein
100 N.Y.U. Law Review 1481 (2025) (1102 downloads)
Fast-growing startups in search of capital and liquidity have traditionally sought to exit the private capital market through M&A or IPO. Until recently, antitrust enforcers rarely challenged startup acquisitions. But under the Biden administration, enforcers worried about the growing dominance of Big Tech sued to block more startup deals. Since antitrust restricts M&A but not IPOs, one might expect that greater antitrust enforcement would cause startups to substitute one kind of exit for another, leading to more IPOs. That did not happen. While M&A and IPOs both provide liquidity, they are not perfect substitutes. We model heterogeneity in IPO and M&A pricing to explore how increased antitrust enforcement impacts venture capital. Economies of scale and scope, synergies, regulatory costs, market power, and market cyclicality can cause IPO valuations to fall significantly below M&A prices. And heightened antitrust scrutiny can reduce the value of an IPO by undermining one of its main advantages: access to publicly traded equity that can be used as currency for future acquisitions. (…)
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5. Data is Infrastructure
by Elettra Bietti
26 Theoretical Inquiries in Law 55 (2025) (1063 downloads)
Data is a contextual phenomenon. It reflects the social and material context from which it is derived and in which it is generated. It embeds the purposes, assumptions and rationales of those who produce, collect, use, share and monetize it. In the AI and digital platform economy, data’s role is primarily infrastructural. Its core uses are internal to companies. Data only rarely serves as a medium of exchange or commodity, and more frequently serves to profile users, train models, produce predictions, bundle and extend product capabilities which in turn are sold to advertisers and other customers. Insofar as they focus on the former, many technical, economic and legal attempts at defining data have inspired reductive policy efforts that include data protection, data ownership and limited data sharing remedies. This paper argues that understanding data as part of infrastructural pipelines can have significant conceptual and policy implications, and can redirect the way privacy, property and antitrust experts understand and govern data. (…)
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6. Corporate Takeovers: Theory and Evidence
by B. Espen Eckbo, Andrey Malenko & Karin S. Thorburn
Foundations and Trends in Finance (1040 downloads)
In this essay, we review theories and empirical evidence describing how bidders and targets navigate the takeover process from the decision to initiate through bid revisions and final acceptance (or rejection) of the offer. This navigation involves complex decisions where potential rival bidders are jockeying for competitive advantage through multiple strategic decisions. Sequentially, these involve (1) Whether to initiate the takeover process (exploiting a first-mover advantage); (2) purchase target shares in the target prior to the first bid (toehold bidding); (3) how to respond to a prebid target stock price runup (markup pricing); (4) optimal bid revisions (jumps) following rival competition and target management resistance; and (5) deal financing and a strategic payment method choice under information asymmetries and a potential for bidder opportunism. We also address more policy-oriented issues related to (6) merger-driven listing dynamics and (7) antitrust policy towards horizontal mergers. We apply the standard auction framework with a single (pivotal) seller as our main theoretical workhorse, which we explain with a set of largely unified variable notations across takeover models. This auction framework, which helps identify theoretical puzzles, is also useful for explaining the outcomes of merger negotiations as it effectively describes the outside option during bargaining.
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7. The Original FTC
by Eli Nachmany
77 Alabama Law Review 1 (2025) (1039 downloads)
In 1914, Congress established the Federal Trade Commission. At the outset, the agency had a limited set of powers that it exercised in aid of Congress and the courts. Congress provided that the commissioners of the FTC were generally to be free from presidential removal. And in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, decided in 1935, the Supreme Court upheld these protections as constitutional. The Court in that case rested its holding on the quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative nature of the FTC’s functions. Today, Humphrey’s Executor looms large—its holding suggests that the President cannot remove FTC commissioners at will, even 90 years after the Court decided the case. That is incorrect. In the years since Humphrey’s Executor, Congress has expanded the FTC’s powers dramatically. It is no longer the quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative agency that the Court in Humphrey’s Executor evaluated. Thus, because the statutory scheme evaluated in Humphrey’s Executor no longer exists as it was when the Court decided the case, the Court’s holding no longer applies to the modern FTC. The difference between the original FTC and the modern FTC compels the following conclusion: The President can remove FTC commissioners at will without contravening Humphrey’s Executor or any other precedent of the Supreme Court.
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8. Google Search and Antitrust’s Remedial Goals
by Herbert Hovenkamp
Boston University Law Review (2026) (1026 downloads)
A successful antitrust remedy should undo the effects of any antitrust violation that has served to increase prices, reduce output, or restrain innovation. The equity statute that the Antitrust Division uses authorizes a court to “prevent and restrain” an antitrust violation. This requires a causal relationship between the violation and any remedy that the court produces. That is, the remedy cannot simply be a disembodied attempt to restructure a market without tying it to the particular harm that violated the antitrust laws. The remedy statute also authorizes proceedings “by way of petition setting forth the case and praying that such violation shall be enjoined or otherwise prohibited.” That language clearly authorizes injunctions. Structural relief, or a “breakup,” falls within the “otherwise prohibited” category – that is, breakups are not the preferred remedy but they are permissible when needed. (…)
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9. Preliminary references in competition law: some views from the European Commission’s Legal Service
by Fernando Castillo de la Torre
Preliminary Rulings in EU Antitrust Law, A. Vernet, V. Pereira, K. Strouvali, N. Brüggemann (eds.) (1014 downloads)
This is a draft chapter in an upcoming book on preliminary ruling in EU antitrust law. The chapter focuses on the role of the European Commission, and particularly its Legal Service, in the development of the law in this area. It explains how the Legal Service works, how preliminary references on competition law are handled, and takes stock of whether the Commission has been successful in convincing the European Court of Justice.
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10. ‘Naked’ Restrictions and Article 102 TFEU – The Emergence of an Epithet in EU Competition Law
by Ioannis Lianos
Faculty of Laws University College London Law Research Paper No. 05/2025 (969 downloads)
The study engages with the ‘dark matter’ of Article 102, the concept of ‘naked restrictions’ and the possibility of ‘by object’ restrictions in Article 102 TFEU. Through analysis of recent Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and General Court (GC) jurisprudence, alongside evolving Commission positions, we argue that the Commission’s Draft Guidelines’ elevated treatment of ‘naked restrictions’ signals a strategic recalibration of the ‘more economic approach’ in Article 102 TFEU interpretation and enforcement. This paper contributes to the hermeneutics of Article 102 TFEU by examining the intersection between economic thinking (focused on effects analysis and the error cost framework) and the legal-moral core of Article 102 TFEU, offering insights into the ontological content of ‘restriction of competition.’ (…)
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