Like Will, I also thought this year got away from me. But every year gets away from me. (Overcommitting and then feeling constantly behind is my number one productivity tip.) Also like Will, I published four papers during 2019. But a difference is that all four of my published papers were co-authored empirical articles in peer-reviewed law and economics journals.

The first paper explored the influence that law clerks have on voting at the Supreme Court. In Legal Rasputins? Law Clerk Influence on Voting at the U.S. Supreme Court (Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization), we collected data on the identities and political ideologies of law clerks going back to 1960.[1] We then were able to use the timing of the Supreme Court clerk hiring process to identify that clerks exert modest effects on the votes of the judges’ they work for. But we found that the clerks exert substantial influence in cases that are high-profile, legally significant, or close decisions.

The other three papers all were on comparative antitrust law, and leveraged a series of major datasets that Anu Bradford and I assembled over the last five years or so. We also launched a new website to host the data and associated research. It’s got a lot of great new data for download, so check it out at http://comparativecompetitionlaw.org/.

In Competition Gone Global: Introducing the Comparative Competition Law and Enforcement Datasets (Journal of Empirical Legal Studies), we introduce the two major datasets that we assembled for this project.[2] One of the datasets codes the contents of 700 competition laws adopted by 130 countries and regional organizations since the beginning of competition law, and the other dataset provides information on the resources and enforcement activities of 112 antitrust agencies dating back to 1990. We use the data to illustrate some previously under explored trends in antitrust law, like how Russia has used competition law in a fundamentally different way than other countries.

In Trade Openness and Antitrust Law (Journal of Law and Economics), we use our data to explore a long-running debate in economics.[3] We spent years on this paper, and wanting to write it was one of the reasons we decided to spend years collecting antitrust data. So I’ll just share the whole abstract:

Openness to international trade and adoption of antitrust laws can both curb anticompetitive behavior. But scholars have long debated the relationship between the two. Some argue that greater trade openness makes antitrust unnecessary, while others contend that antitrust laws are still needed to realize the benefits of trade liberalization. Data limitations have made this debate largely theoretical to date. We study the relationship between trade and antitrust empirically using new data on antitrust laws and enforcement activities. We find that trade openness and stringency of antitrust laws are positively correlated from 1950 to 2010 overall, but the positive correlation disappears in the early 1990s as a large number of new countries adopt antitrust laws. However, we find a positive correlation between trade openness and antitrust enforcement resources and activities for both early and late adopters of antitrust regimes during this period.

In The Global Dominance of European Competition Law Over American Antitrust Law (Journal of Empirical Legal Studies), we looked at the diffusion of specific antitrust rules around the world during the post-war period.[4] We show that countries used to follow the American model when they adopted antirust now, but that now countries overwhelmingly follow the European model.

I also published a few short comments and op-eds, and spent a lot of time on projects that I’ll be blogging about in the new year.

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[1] This paper was co-authored with Adam Bonica, Jacob Goldin, Kyle Rozema, and Maya Sen.

[2] This paper was co-authored with Anu Bradford, Christopher Megaw, and Nathaniel Sokol.

[3] This paper was co-authored with Anu Bradford.

[4] This paper was co-authored with Anu Bradford, Katerina Linos, and Alex Weaver.