February 28, 2024
Managing Director Hal Singer invited to Harvard Law School.
Antitrust expert Managing Director Hal Singer had a lunch talk with Harvard law students on February 27, 2024. Singer discussed the challenges facing enforcers in pursuing labor theories of harm, including proving a nexus between the challenged conduct and wage suppression, demonstrating market power, and rebutting efficiency defenses. After explaining these challenges in light of the DOJ’s success in blocking a book publishing merger under a labor theory of harm, Dr. Singer fielded questions from the law students and the moderator, second-year law student Luke Hinrichs.
Labor theory of harm is a more recent area of concern for antitrust law and has been in the spotlight in recent years with the DOJ successfully blocking the Penguin Random House’s proposed acquisition of Simon & Schuster in 2022. When challenging proposed mergers, the DOJ has often focused on harm to consumers, but in this case, the DOJ focused on author earnings and argued that the new company would dominate the market for commercial books which have sizeable author advances, and that the size of these advances would go down and the number of releases would also decrease. This represented a shift from focusing on harm to consumers to focusing on harm to workers. Despite the DOJ’s success here, further challenges can be expected for enforcers pursuing labor theories of harm.