UT Law professor garners positive reviews for book published by Harvard

Harvard University Press has published a new book by Maurice Stucke, a University of Tennessee College of Law professor and a former trial attorney with the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division.

The book, Virtual Competition: The Promise and Perils of the Algorithm-Driven Economy, is co-authored by Ariel Ezrachi, a University of Oxford Faculty of Law professor and director of the University of Oxford Centre for Competition Law and Policy.

Virtual Competition Book

“In this thought-provoking exposé, Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice Stucke invite us to take a harder look at today’s app-assisted paradise of digital shopping. While consumers reap many benefits from online purchasing, the sophisticated algorithms and data-crunching that make browsing so convenient are also changing the nature of market competition, and not always for the better,” reads the book’s description. “The changing market reality is already shifting power into the hands of the few. Ezrachi and Stucke explore the resulting risks to competition, our democratic ideals, and our economic and overall well-being.”

The book is available now at bookstores and online booksellers and has received positive, high-profile reviews, including one from The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) and one by the Yale School of Management’s Barry Nalebuff for Science Magazine.

“We owe the authors our deep gratitude for anticipating and explaining the consequences of living in a world in which black boxes collude and leave no trails behind. They make it clear that in a world of big data and algorithmic pricing, consumers are outgunned and antitrust laws are outdated, especially in the United States,” writes Nalebuff. “They want their readers to agitate for new antitrust laws. Sign me up. When the masses get mad enough, perhaps they’ll elect a new trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt for the digital era. In the meantime, we can hope the ideas discussed in Virtual Competition get on the political agenda.”

Stucke is one of the nation’s foremost experts on the intersection of law and technology. He has also co-authored the book Big Data and Competition Policy, published earlier this year by Oxford University Press, with Allen P. Grunes, an antitrust lawyer who co-founded the Konkurrenz Group with Stucke.

This month, Stucke will address competition authorities from around the globe on the subject of Big Data and competition policy and law at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s annual conference in Paris.