How does Amazon make its money? This question might seem like it would be simple to answer, but it is widely misunderstood. For years, business journalists and analysts have held that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the real profit driver behind the tech conglomerate. However, contrary to this narrative, Amazon’s most profitable business is Amazon Marketplace. Why is the mainstream belief wrong? Amazon has constructed this misconception through financial accounting techniques which mask not just online shopping’s profitability, but also the damage Amazon does to third party sellers.
As prices continue to rise, there is no bigger domestic issue than inflation. Last month, inflation soared to 7.5% – the highest it has been since 1982. Rising inflation rates is not an abstract economic concept but a real problem that makes it harder for the poorest members of our society to buy food, clothing, and other essential products they need. While it is true that supply-chain issues have helped contribute to inflation, what has made our supply chain system so weak?
A recent antitrust class-action against Georgetown and sixteen other top Universities claims every Georgetown student's deepest suspicion: Georgetown isn’t really need-blind. The suit alleges that for the past two decades, sixteen top universities engaged in an illicit price fixing cartel that resulted in higher tuition for over 170,000 students.
The recent labor shortage has given employees new power to demand better working conditions and new wages. The increased pressure on employers has led to a moderate increase in wages. In order to sustain this pro-worker movement in the economy, it is important to understand why wages were stagnant until now, and how they might become stagnant once more. To do this, I plan to answer a very simple, but timely, question: what does antitrust enforcement mean for labor markets? What does antitrust enforcement mean for labor markets?
This week marks roughly a month since former Facebook executive and data scientist Frances Haugen disclosed thousands of pages of insider documents about Facebook’s inner workings to the SEC and later to Congress. These documents dubbed the "Facebook Papers,” detail Facebook’s inner conflict over combating misinformation on its platform. The Facebook papers reveal that Facebook is well aware of the extent to which their platform promotes misinformation. A new idea is needed to understand this new order: surveillance capitalism.
As private equity firms expand their control over the nursing home market, thousands of vulnerable elderly Americans are being placed at risk of receiving subpar treatment and care, especially during a pandemic.
The Department of Justice’s potential lawsuit against Google would mark the fifth major antitrust action against the tech giant in recent years, challenging Google's role as the top player in the multi-billion market for digital advertising.
