Hal Singer
5K posts
Hal Singer
@HalSinger
MD @ EconOne | Prof @EconUofU | ED @ UtahProject | NYTimes: "one expert for the plaintiffs" | Prospect:"preeminent watchdog of The Economist's most wrong takes"
Washington, D.C. Присоединился Aralık 2011
2.9K Подписки16.6K Подписчики
@HalSinger Do you think a half percentage point of GDP is "barely falling"? Apparently you do, but that's actually a big effect, especially from something that is 3% of consumer spending
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The quoted sentence clearly says GDP will be reduced! Maybe it is telling us exactly what economists say it tells us.
Hal Singer@HalSinger
Further evidence that GDP growth, the standard measure of the “health” of the U.S. economy, is not an indicator of consumer well-being. Consumers are feeling the pinch of higher gas prices, and will soon face higher prices for oil-dependent services such as air travel. Because spending is merely shifted from what consumers originally needed to more expensive gas and oil-dependent activities, GDP based on the expenditure approach will barely fall. And because refineries enjoy higher profits during oil crises, GDP based on the income approach will also be immune to the crisis.
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Hal Singer ретвитнул
The week in review: Beau Baumann on the lost art of constitutional politics, @HalSinger on the market definition trap, and Ben Gerstein on the political economy of settler retrenchment.
Plus, some LPE 💎s from around the web!
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@bencasselman And if you have any doubt about refineries profiting during oil crises, check this out
x.com/halsinger/stat…
Hal Singer@HalSinger
"When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, crude oil prices rose by about 71 cents per gallon. But retail gas prices jumped roughly $1.50 per gallon. That’s a 79-cent gap—pure profit for refiners and gas stations, pocketed under the fog of war. California’s Division of Petroleum Market Oversight (DPMO) confirmed this finding in an October 2025 report: Every price spike they studied—2019, 2022, 2023—also constituted a profit spike. Retail prices surged well beyond what increases in crude oil costs could explain. And when wholesale prices eventually dropped, gas stations kept their prices high, also to their windfall." My latest via @monthly asks why we should tolerate such profiteering during a crisis, including wars. It also proposes some concrete ideas on how to address this anti-social behavior. Special thanks to @mypaperboat and @ZephyrTeachout for comments, and to @WeisbergNate for excellent edits.
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Go read the whole story here by @bencasselman
nytimes.com/2026/03/20/bus…
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Further evidence that GDP growth, the standard measure of the “health” of the U.S. economy, is not an indicator of consumer well-being. Consumers are feeling the pinch of higher gas prices, and will soon face higher prices for oil-dependent services such as air travel. Because spending is merely shifted from what consumers originally needed to more expensive gas and oil-dependent activities, GDP based on the expenditure approach will barely fall. And because refineries enjoy higher profits during oil crises, GDP based on the income approach will also be immune to the crisis.
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So at best, this story leads to greater supply in the long term for low-income households, a price effect that might not be realized for decades. Go sell that on the stump!
I am also skeptical that high-income shoppers will substitute to low- or mid-tier apartments in response to a rent hike for nice apartments in a neighborhood. They will either leave the neighborhood in search of other high-end rentals or buy a place outright. Such substitution is needed to bring price relief to low-income households in the short run.
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@HalSinger I dont see this as that crazy? Although the argument I have seen is often more long term.
New High end apartments built today will be the low-end cheap apartments of tomorrow. If you look at the 30yo buildings that are cheap today, they were not built at the time for low-income
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The latest trickle-down-economics theory: Build luxury housing … for the poors!
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@KevinTartis I’m speaking of the FTC’s challenge to the Meta-Within merger. You’re speaking to the Meta-Instagram merger. Again, I commend you to read my piece.
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@HalSinger No. At the end the ftc lost because of the silly definition. Judge James Boasberg obliterated the absurdity of the FTC market definition. If you have to absurdly narrowly define a market to make a company a monopoly, they are not a monopoly. FTC has turned into a jobs program
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In case you missed it, I have a new piece in the LPE blog on how market definition undermines enforcement efforts, even when the enforcer prevails on that issue. As a case study, I use the FTC’s attempt to block the Meta-Within merger—a case in which I served as the FTC’s expert. Here’s the takeaway.
Hal Singer@HalSinger
There’s a reason that companies like Live Nation and Netflix (before it abandoned its acquisition of Warner Bros.) love to make expansive, sometimes absurd, claims about market definition: as the Supreme Court has narrowed the scope of per se illegality in antitrust law, plaintiffs are required to demonstrate that defendants possess market power. And, as I explain in my first @LPEblog post, one way to make this requirement more burdensome is to turn the trial into a costly, complex fight over market definition. Special thanks to the editors, @j_e_brandt and Liz Brown, for asking the hard questions, as well as to @mypaperboat and @TedTatos for wonderful comments. lpeproject.org/blog/the-marke…
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@KevinTartis Kevin, read the piece. The FTC won on market definition.
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@HalSinger That's goofy. FTC narrowly defined Facebooks market definition by excluding twitter and a dozen other big social media platforms.
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Hal Singer ретвитнул
50 years ago, there was a push to stop corporate control of the slopes. It failed. Now two companies dominate the industry and can charge whatever they want.
New reporting from @LeverNews: levernews.com/powder-grab-th…
The Lever@LeverNews
Skiing, more than ever before, has become a pastime for the elite. Two companies now dominate the slopes, turning them into cash machines where a day can run you thousands. Vail Daily reporter John LaConte dug into the deal that made it happen.
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@tolles This story presumes that when rents of high end apartments rise, wealthy consumers settle for mid-tier apartments. But a more likely reaction is to buy a place outright, or to change neighborhoods for a high-end rental.
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@HalSinger Why is is this so inscrutable? In high end real estate markets with growing high earner populations (blue cities), not building market rate housing causes displacement more than building it
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@michaeldomps @fuelgrannie These lickspittles are paid to peddle a fake narrative. A bird flaps its wings in San Francisco and low-end rents fall from record highs in Austin. Ergo, the bird caused rents to fall.
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@HalSinger @fuelgrannie “Most consistent finding in housing studies”
How many studies
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Hal Singer ретвитнул
8 states file antitrust complaint against NXST/TGNA.
oag.ca.gov/system/files/a…
Interesting complaint in that it goes after retrans and degredation of local news coverage as a consumer welfare/loss of competing product issue. /1
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@Sherman1890 I’d condemn any agreement to turn over pricing authority to a common agent (human or AI). No sharing of CSI needed. No need for enforcement action.
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@HalSinger RPM and MAPs are fairly common example. On algorithms, would you condemn simple agreements to share under a per se rule? or would you limit it to agreements that also involve some enforcement action, as in RealPage?
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@Sherman1890 I suggested common pricing algorithms in the piece, regardless of whether competitively sensitive info is shared. RPM and MAPs are also good candidates.
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@HalSinger so what practices would you apply the per se rule to that are currently addressed under the rule of reason?
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Hal Singer ретвитнул
Dems should be for the working class, not the Epstein class.
I plead guilty to coining the phrase.
Jon Favreau@jonfavs
In this op-ed, @ThirdWayTweet actually argues that "Epstein class" is an "age-old trope" pushed by "Jew-haters on the left."
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Hal Singer ретвитнул
1/ As I reported my book, I noticed something that has completely changed American life: widespread chronic under-staffing. It leads to, among other things, deadly medication errors at pharmacies, flight delays, messy stores, and the crime wave. From me today @TheProspect
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Hal Singer ретвитнул
Made this point earlier about Rapino being cute with Live Nation’s market share.
#tickets
Hal Singer@HalSinger
There’s a reason that companies like Live Nation and Netflix (before it abandoned its acquisition of Warner Bros.) love to make expansive, sometimes absurd, claims about market definition: as the Supreme Court has narrowed the scope of per se illegality in antitrust law, plaintiffs are required to demonstrate that defendants possess market power. And, as I explain in my first @LPEblog post, one way to make this requirement more burdensome is to turn the trial into a costly, complex fight over market definition. Special thanks to the editors, @j_e_brandt and Liz Brown, for asking the hard questions, as well as to @mypaperboat and @TedTatos for wonderful comments. lpeproject.org/blog/the-marke…
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