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Antitrust Conference Series

About the Stigler Center Antitrust Conferences

In 2017, the Stigler Center embarked on an to , starting with the conference Is There a Concentration Problem in America? In 2018, the Center’s conference, Digital Platforms and Concentration, brought together scholars and influencers to consider the market power of digital platforms. There, a consensus emerged that the issues raised by these platforms must be addressed, and the Stigler Center formed a Digital Platforms Committee to provide independent expertise on the appropriate policy responses. The Stigler Center’s 2019 conference Digital Platforms, Markets and Democracy: A Path Forward, discussed the initial conclusions of this Committee, later published as the Stigler Committee on Digital Platforms: Final Report.

Between 2020 and 2021, we hosted a conference series on the interconnection between market and political power called Monopolies and Politics. In 2022, our conference Antitrust: What’s Next? discussed whether the field of competition policy reached an inflection point—both in academia and in policy—that may lead to once- in-a-generation changes. In 2023, our conference addressed the future of antitrust enforcement beyond the Consumer Welfare Standard—and there was broad academic agreement that it is time to move antitrust policy and enforcement forward. The 2024 conference Antitrust, Regulation and the Diffusion of Innovation brought together experts from academia, government, and industry to discuss the impact of antitrust enforcement on productivity growth and innovation.

At our 2025 conference, Economic Concentration and the Marketplace of Ideas, leading scholars, journalists, and policymakers debated the role of market power in shaping media, academic institutions, civic discourse, and regulatory frameworks—at a moment when trust in democratic systems, scientific expertise, and legacy media is increasingly fragile. In the conference Keynote Address, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson warned that market concentration in digital platforms may threaten both free speech and democratic consensus.

“The marketplace of ideas is valuable not only because it helps us to discern what is true … but also because it promotes a political order where consensus is forged by the exercise of public persuasion rather than imposed by the exercise of public power.”

— Andrew Ferguson, US Federal Trade Commission Chair (2025)

Conference Impact

The Stigler Committee on Digital Platforms Final Report was the among the most cited documents in the with 23 citations. The report was also mentioned in the and has been cited by think tanks and policy organizations such as the Center for American Progress in their report . This is in addition to innumerable other citations in reports/investigations by authorities at the EU level, UK, Germany, France, Portugal, Italy, Australia, Brazil, Russia, India, and more.

In 2023, the Stigler Center’s publication ProMarket was the authoritative publication for the Merger Guidelines debate, as evidenced by the of a letter signed by 17 former chief economists of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) on the Merger Guidelines. Thus, it came as little surprise when the sitting economic heads of the DOJ and FTC on the final draft of the document, including an acknowledgement of the critiques we published on improving the policy.

“The Stigler Center as an institution gave credibility and respectability to a set of questions that, even at that moment in time, were not seen as respectable.”

— Lina Khan, Former US Federal Trade Commission Chair (2022)

Press Coverage and Citations – Highlights


July 13, 2025 | Bloomberg


April 4, 2024 | Bloomberg


April 22, 2024 | Financial Time


September 18, 2023 | POLITICO


July 31, 2023 | Wall Street Journal Video


June 6, 2022 | Financial Times


September 9, 2020 | Exposure Labs Documentary


August 30, 2019 | Marketplace


September 15, 2019 | New York Times


June 6, 2018 | The Economist

Conference Keynote Speakers – Highlights

  • - Chairman, U.S. Federal Trade Commission (2025)
  • - Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice (2024, 2022)
  • - Chair, U.S. Federal Trade Commission (2024, 2022)
  • , University of Chicago (2024)
  • - Columbia University (2023, 2024)
  • - Stanford University/U.S. Department of Justice (2023)
  • & - U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit/University of Chicago (2023)
  • - Nobel Laureate/Harvard University (2023)
  • - R-CO, U.S. House of Representatives (2022)
  • - Nobel Laureate/Boston College (2021)
  • - Facebook Co-founder/Economic Security Project (2019)
  • - Google/UC Berkeley (2019)
  • – Former Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice (2018) - Nobel Laureate/Stanford (2018)
  • - Nobel Laureate/Toulouse School of Economics (2018)
  • - U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit/University of Chicago (2017)

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