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Social media networks make their services freely available to all users. Users pay for the service received with the time and attention taken by the advertisements. This chapter argues that social media platforms are a unique form of monopoly driven by “the more the merrier” effect (i.e., network effects) in users' consumption. These monopolies exercise market power, not by charging higher prices to users but by “tying” larger amounts of advertising to their content. Traditional antitrust instruments designed to address excessive pricing and reduced output by monopolies need to be reframed to tame the attention economy problems in the social media industry. This chapter discusses five antitrust instruments grouped in three categories: structural, behavioral, and market-based remedies. Market-based solutions are the least explored in the literature, despite being the most promising instruments to lower the attention costs imposed on users, while preserving the economies of scope in production and the network effects in consumption, and possibly maintaining free access to social media, as we know it today.

For a book claiming that it “introduces the reader to the major concepts,” I was quite disappointed by the papers devoted to the application of economic reasoning to legal rules. No one directly defined the core of the Chicago approach. There were no quotations from Becker about the “economic way of thinking” and no mention of Posner's famous claim that “the common law bears the stamp of economic reasoning.” This section provides examples from three papers to illustrate the lack of a clear presentation of the meaning of the economic analysis of the law, as defined by the Chicago school.

The paper aims to investigate the role of the network in managing the tradition and innovation paradox in the agribusiness industry. In particular, this study aims to demonstrate that agribusiness firms can innovate through tradition by joining a network, to capture the way intellectual capital (IC) is created, shared and transformed.

The authors approached the study using the social capital conceptual framework, considering the network a critical determinant of social capital, which enhances the organization's ability to share, create and utilize knowledge. Then, the authors also employed the extended territorial strategy theory. The authors derived empirical evidence from companies belonging to the PGI-labeled Consortium of Pasta di Gragnano (Consortium). The authors used a quantitative approach, carrying out a panel data analysis.

The results suggested that belonging to Consortium had a positive impact on the operating performance, the financial performance and the environment where consortium firms operate. Thus, being part of a network helps firms to innovate in a traditional industry.

The evidence of this work provided several implications for managers, IC community and the policy public. For managers, the authors observed that agribusiness firms can preserve their traditions through knowledge sharing with firms that operate in the same network. For IC community, the authors contributed to the debate on the social capital theory, arguing that the one area of IC that has received significant attention is the role of the network, which enhances the organization's ability to generate, share and apply knowledge effectively (Lin, 2017; Solitander and Tidström, 2010). Finally, the authors argued that policymakers should implement new reforms that facilitate the formation of networks, especially in socio-economic contexts where the unemployment rate is high.

This is the first study that employs quantitative analysis to investigate this paradox.

The founders of modern economic thought in Italy are Francesco Ferrara (1810–1900), Luigi Cossa (1831–1896) and Angelo Messedaglia (1820–1901).

This paper discusses the American debate over price controls and economic stabilization after World War II, when the transition from a war economy to a peace economy was characterized by bottlenecks in the productive system and shortages of food and other basic consumer goods, directly affecting the living standard of the population, the public opinion, and political discourse. Specifically, we will focus on the economist Franco Modigliani and his proposal for a “Plan to meet the problem of rising meat and other food prices without bureaucratic controls.” The plan prepared by Modigliani in October 1947 was based on a system of taxes and subsidies to foster a proper distribution of disposable income and warrant a minimum meat consumption for each individual without encroaching market mechanisms and consumers’ freedom. We will discuss the contents of the plan and its further refinements, and the reactions it prompted from fellow economists, the public opinion, and the political world. Although the Plan was not eventually implemented, it was an important initiative for several reasons: first, it showed the increasing importance of fiscal policy among postwar government tools of intervention in the economic sphere; second, it showed a third way between direct government intervention and full-fledged laissez faire, in tune with the postwar political climate; third, it proposed a Keynesian macroeconomic approach to price and income stabilization, strongly based on econometric and microeconomic foundations. The Meat Plan was thus a fundamental step in Modigliani’s effort to build the “neoclassical synthesis” between Keynesian and Neoclassical economics, which would deeply influence his own career and the evolution of academic studies and government practices in the United States.