Morgan Ricks

Vanderbilt law prof. Formerly U.S. Treasury (crisis team), Citadel (risk arb), Merrill Lynch (FIG inv. banking), Wachtell (M&A). Read my book The Money Problem

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

Lev Menand and I laid out a blueprint here: https://t.co/GV9YkYA07C

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

I'm a broken record on this but it's impossible to make sense of these debates without understanding that the question is not just one of consumer protection or financial stability or law enforcement -- though it is all of those things -- but of monetary system design.

[Brendan Pedersen @BrendanPedersen]

Jamie Dimon, complaining about the Clarity Act and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong this AM: “He’s spending hundreds of millions of dollars in Washington in this thing.”

Maria: “He said he’s representing the whole —”

Dimon: “He’s full of shit.”

Maria: “…well.”

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

@mikejz I can't speak to Southern Airways, nor am I defending the old CAB system specifically, but a lot of smaller communities saw significant service degradation post deregulation and were mad about it.

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

It's a banal point but competition is often dysfunctional in network industries and the more dysfunctional it is, the more likely it is that economic regulation (which has both advantages and disadvantages) may compare favorably.

[The Argument @TheArgumentMag]

What does Spirit Airlines’ collapse reveal about the bigger fight over competition, deregulation, and antitrust?

In this clip, @mattyglesias literally puts on the tinfoil hat and argues that the debate over airline deregulation is a “tell” for a much larger ideological divide: whether policymakers should use antitrust to make markets more competitive — or use the language of competition to justify bringing back older, more heavily regulated economic frameworks.

Watch to the full episode of The Argument: https://t.co/pDoCQMpfId

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

@mikejz Note the trend before deregulation. Hard to evaluate the counterfactual but I gather the best empirical analysis says dereg. reduced fares by ~20% eventually. So the $160 flight today would instead be $200. Some of it would have gone to sustaining service in smaller communities.

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

@sirchadius @fredstaffordcs @mattyglesias Certainly a debatable point.

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

@mikejz Depends on where you live.

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

@Michael34664811 @phil_bel Not a natural monopoly, no, but like many other network/platform industries, far from perfectly competitive.

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

@Baron_Douro Sounds like we agree there's a spectrum. Airlines historically exhibit classic features of other network/platform industries (telegraph, rail, stock exchanges, etc.) that have tended strongly toward oligopoly irrespective of regulation.

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

@Tpsmyth01 @phil_bel Possibly; hard to say.

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

@Baron_Douro Strong tendency toward oligopoly for a variety of reasons: consumers value extensive networks, frequency, seamless connections; limited airport slots; hub dominance; etc.

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

@fredstaffordcs @mattyglesias Right. We aren't restricted to a single tool of economic governance; there are certain network/platform resources that aren't governed well by competition and for which economic regulation may therefore be more attractive.

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

@mattyglesias @MattBruenig Not here to defend the old CAB system but even so ... there are tradeoffs. AI tells me the best evidence is that deregulation lowered average fares by 20%. But a signif. portion of this was from reduction of service to smaller communities. Can view that as socially costly.

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

@mattyglesias @MattBruenig Not here to defend the old CAB system but even so ... there are tradeoffs. AI tells me the best evidence is that deregulation lowered average fares by 20%. But a signif. portion of this was from reduction of service to smaller communities. Can view that as socially costly.

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

@phil_bel Combination of factors. Consumers value broad networks; limited airport slots; etc.

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

@mattyglesias I don't see an inconsistency between wanting more competition/antitrust generally, on the one hand, and wanting more economic regulation (or planning if you prefer) in selected industries, on the other.

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

(both kinds)

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

Converting me to chartism.

[Florian Ederer @florianederer]

Right back up to the blue line

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

A great service to the legal scholarship profession -->

[Dan Epps @danepps]

Zotero folks: I just pushed a new update to my style file that has better handling for preprints and unpublished manuscripts. See link in tweet below.

[Morgan Ricks @MorganRicks1]

Good read. https://t.co/RBJqLcalcN