The drumbeat gets louder: is anti-competitive conduct trumping innovation as the foundation for high tech dominance?
Dangling at the end of a column that appeared in the October 6th issue of The Economist (�Bought and paid for�) are the following provocative words-- To a growing extent, the productivity gap between technologically advanced firms and laggards suggests anti-competitive behaviour rather than the superior innovative capacity of top firms. Productivity-enhancing innovations are supposed to spread, raising growth and incomes. That they no longer seem to accomplish this reflects barriers to competition that are supported by powerful firms, including non-compete clauses, overly tight intellectual-property rules and an accommodating attitude to acquisitions by market leaders. It seems ever clearer that, when corporations open their wallets to politicians, the public loses. I say �dangling� because most of the piece (relying in part on a report from the National Bureau of Economic Research by Ufuk Akcigit , Salom� Baslandze , and Francesca Lotti ) is devoted to the question of what happen...