The American Antitrust Institute's Ruled by Reason podcast explores current topics in progressive antitrust with experts from enforcement, business, and academia. Ruled by Reason guests discuss and debate the benefits of competition for markets, consumers, and workers. We delve into the importance of antitrust enforcement for promoting competition in our markets and democratic values in civil society.
"Power and Greed: Monopolies, Mergers, and Cartels on the American Stage"—A Conversation with Author and Professor Spencer Weber Waller
In this episode of Ruled by Reason, AAI General Counsel Mark S. Hegedus sits down with Professor Spencer Weber Waller of Loyola University Chicago School of Law to discuss his new book, Power and Greed: Monopolies, Mergers, and Cartels on the American Stage, published by Methuen Drama, which is part of Bloomsbury, on October 15, 2026. The book chronicles the history of cartels and monopoly power in American live entertainment, from the rise of national theater and vaudeville circuits in the late nineteenth century to the modern-day antitrust litigation against Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
28 Sept 2026
Antitrust Settlements, Transparency, and the Tunney Act: A Conversation with Darren Bush
In this episode of Ruled by Reason, AAI President Randy Stutz sits down with Professor Darren Bush of the University of Houston Law Center to discuss the Antitrust Penalties and Procedures Act of 1974, better known as the Tunney Act, and its role in promoting transparency and judicial scrutiny of DOJ antitrust settlements.
Federal antitrust enforcement today relies heavily on negotiated settlements rather than litigation. While settlements can conserve public resources, shorten the duration of anticompetitive conduct, and provide relief without the costs and delay of trial, they also raise important transparency concerns because negotiations occur behind closed doors and affected members of the public are not at the table. The Tunney Act was designed in part to address those concerns by requiring public disclosure, an opportunity for public comment, and judicial review of DOJ consent decrees under a public-interest standard.
Stutz and Bush discuss the origins of the Tunney Act and the political controversy surrounding the ITT settlement that helped spur its enactment (5:50); the Act's disclosure and public-comment requirements (7:40); and the important distinction between pre-complaint consent decrees governed by the Tunney Act and settlements reached after litigation has begun and testimony has been taken (11:32).
They then trace the evolution of judicial review under the Act, including the AT&T and Microsoft cases, the emergence of highly deferential review in the D.C. Circuit, and Congress's 2004 amendments aimed at strengthening meaningful judicial scrutiny (19:21). Bush explains why, in his view, courts have continued to treat many Tunney Act proceedings too deferentially notwithstanding those amendments.
The conversation also turns to recent settlements that have renewed attention on the Tunney Act. Stutz and Bush examine the DOJ settlement of the HPE–Juniper merger challenge, the discovery ordered by the district court into the settlement process, concerns about political influence and remedies unrelated to competitive harm, and the court's ultimate decision to enter the decree (25:47). They also discuss the developing Tunney Act proceeding involving DOJ's settlement with Live Nation and the broader question whether courts should scrutinize not only the substance of antitrust settlements but also the integrity of the process by which they were reached.
Finally, Stutz and Bush consider possible reforms, including proposals to extend Tunney Act-style review to Federal Trade Commission settlements and to clarify the respective roles of prosecutorial discretion and judicial review in evaluating government antitrust settlements (37:34).
29 Jul 2026
Does Common Leadership Facilitate Collusion? A Conversation with Ellie Prager
In this episode of Ruled by Reason, AAI Senior Counsel David O. Fisher sits down with economist Ellie Prager to discuss her paper, Collusion Through Common Leadership, co-authored with Alejandro Herrera-Caicedo and Jessica Jeffers and accepted for publication in the Journal of Political Economy.
The episode continues a discussion begun in the previous episode of Ruled by Reason about interlocking directorates, or what Professor Prager and her co-authors call "common leadership." Whereas the term "interlocking directorates" traditionally refers to one person sitting on the boards of two companies, common leadership also encompasses arrangements in which an executive of one company simultaneously serves on the board of another.
Professor Prager and her co-authors examine whether common leadership is associated with a greater likelihood of collusion. Using evidence from litigation involving no-poach agreements among Silicon Valley companies, they find that the arrival of a common leader increases the probability that two companies will enter into a collusive agreement by 11 percentage points—a ninefold increase over the rate among company pairs without common leaders.
Fisher and Prager discuss the distinction between interlocking directorates and common leadership (3:34); the paper's central finding connecting common leadership to collusion (5:03); how evidence from the Silicon Valley no-poach litigation made it possible to study that connection empirically (11:07); why some of the common-leadership arrangements studied were outside the current scope of Section 8 of the Clayton Act (14:22); and how the authors used company-leadership data and econometric methods to distinguish causation from correlation (16:22).
They also explore whether product-market overlap, labor-market overlap, or common ownership could explain the results (21:21); the relationship between common leadership and the broader common-ownership literature (26:15); possible efficiencies arising from information sharing and improved corporate governance (31:37); whether common leadership may be part of a preexisting plan to collude (33:42); and the limits of extrapolating from the particular companies and labor markets examined in the study (39:14).
Finally, Fisher and Prager consider the implications for antitrust policy and enforcement, including whether the findings support increased enforcement of Section 8, the use of common leadership as an investigative signal of possible collusion, and expanding Section 8 to cover competition in labor and other input markets (41:56).
Inside a recent episode
The State of Private Antitrust Enforcement - Confronting Waning Federal Enforcement and Rising Standards
Published 29 Jun 2020 · Transcript excerpt
[…] And so, when you've got these two different complimentary enforcers and one is a lot less active, it is going to have an effect. And unfortunately, you could say it's going to fail to deter, and I can pet it conduct for, you know, put differently, it's going to encourage it. I think I agree with that, Josh, and I think the other thing that is noticeable recently too, and is often a hallmark of Republican administrations, is that the enforcement actions that they pursue tend to be of a more limited nature. And I know it's a generalization, but they tend to look more at bid rigging kinds of investigations or particular topic investigations, and they don't look at the broader cartel kind of activity that generates the really important successful follow -on private litigation. […]
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