Antitrust Conference Series

About the Stigler Center Antitrust Conferences

In 2017, the Stigler Center embarked on an ambitious project to reinvigorate the discussion of concentration and monopoly in the United States, starting with the conference Is There a Concentration Problem in America? In 2018, the Center’s conference, Digital Platforms and Concentration, brought together scholars and influencers to consider the market power of digital platforms. There, a consensus emerged that the issues raised by these platforms must be addressed, and the Stigler Center formed a Digital Platforms Committee to provide independent expertise on the appropriate policy responses. The Stigler Center’s 2019 conference Digital Platforms, Markets and Democracy: A Path Forward, discussed the initial conclusions of this Committee, later published as the Stigler Committee on Digital Platforms: Final Report.

Between 2020 and 2021, we hosted a conference series on the interconnection between market and political power called Monopolies and Politics. In 2022, our conference Antitrust: What’s Next? discussed whether the field of competition policy reached an inflection point—both in academia and in policy—that may lead to once- in-a-generation changes. In 2023, our conference addressed the future of antitrust enforcement beyond the Consumer Welfare Standard—and there was broad academic agreement that it is time to move antitrust policy and enforcement forward. The 2024 conference Antitrust, Regulation and the Diffusion of Innovation brought together experts from academia, government, and industry to discuss the impact of antitrust enforcement on productivity growth and innovation.

At our 2025 conference, Economic Concentration and the Marketplace of Ideas, leading scholars, journalists, and policymakers debated the role of market power in shaping media, academic institutions, civic discourse, and regulatory frameworks—at a moment when trust in democratic systems, scientific expertise, and legacy media is increasingly fragile. In the conference Keynote Address, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson warned that market concentration in digital platforms may threaten both free speech and democratic consensus.

Conference Impact

The Stigler Committee on Digital Platforms Final Report was the among the most cited documents in the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law of the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives - Investigation of Competition in Digital Markets: Majority Staff Report and Recommendations, with 23 citations. The report was also mentioned in the 2020 Economic Report of the President and has been cited by think tanks and policy organizations such as the Center for American Progress in their report Evaluating 2 Tech Antitrust Bills To Restore Competition Online. This is in addition to innumerable other citations in reports/investigations by authorities at the EU level, UK, Germany, France, Portugal, Italy, Australia, Brazil, Russia, India, and more.

In 2023, the Stigler Center’s publication ProMarket was the authoritative publication for the Merger Guidelines debate, as evidenced by the exclusive publication of a letter signed by 17 former chief economists of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) (and a rebuttal) on the Merger Guidelines. Thus, it came as little surprise when the sitting economic heads of the DOJ and FTC chose ProMarket as the place to publish their comments on the final draft of the document, including an acknowledgement of the critiques we published on improving the policy.

Press Coverage and Citations – Highlights

Trump's FTC Chairman Is Becoming MAGA’s Answer to Lina Khan
July 13, 2025 | Bloomberg

US Antitrust Chief Preaches Revolution to Next Generation
April 4, 2024 | Bloomberg

Power, productivity and how our system works
April 22, 2024 | Financial Time

The Justice Department Controversy You Might Have Missed
September 18, 2023 | POLITICO

Why the FTC’s Lina Khan Is Taking on Big Tech, Even if It Means Losing
July 31, 2023 | Wall Street Journal Video

A ‘once-in-a-century inflection point’: DoJ’s antitrust chief on curbing corporate power
June 6, 2022 | Financial Times

The Social Dilemma
September 9, 2020 | Exposure Labs Documentary

Is the government ready to regulate the tech industry?
August 30, 2019 | Marketplace

A Challenge to Big Tech and Antitrus Thinking in a Surprising Place
September 15, 2019 | New York Times

How regulators can prevent excessive concentration online
June 6, 2018 | The Economist

Conference Keynote Speakers – Highlights

• Andrew Ferguson - Chairman, U.S. Federal Trade Commission (2025)
• Jonathan Kanter - Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice (2024, 2022)
• Lina Khan - Chair, U.S. Federal Trade Commission (2024, 2022)
• Randal Picker, University of Chicago (2024)
• Tim Wu - Columbia University (2023, 2024)
• Susan Athey - Stanford University/U.S. Department of Justice (2023)
• Frank Easterbook & Diane Wood - U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit/University of Chicago (2023)
• Oliver Hart - Nobel Laureate/Harvard University (2023)
• Ken Buck- R-CO, U.S. House of Representatives (2022)
• Paul Romer - Nobel Laureate/Boston College (2021)
• Chris Hughes - Facebook Co-founder/Economic Security Project (2019)
• Hal Varian - Google/UC Berkeley (2019)
• Makan Delrahim – Former Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice (2018) Alvin Roth - Nobel Laureate/Stanford (2018)
• Jean Tirole - Nobel Laureate/Toulouse School of Economics (2018)
• Richard A. Posner - U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit/University of Chicago (2017)