A Reputational View of Antitrust’s Consumer Welfare Standard

A reform movement is underway in antitrust. Citing prior enforcement failures, deviations from the original intent of the antitrust laws, and overall rising levels of sector concentration, some are seeking to fundamentally alter or altogether replace the current consumer welfare standard, which has guided courts over the past fifty years. This policy push has sparked an intense debate over the best approach to antitrust law enforcement. In this Article, we examine a previously unexplored potential social cost from moving away from the consumer welfare standard: a loss in the information value to the public from a finding of liability. A virtue of the current standard is the knowledge that firms who violate the antitrust laws have harmed consumers. This simple reality is a direct, easy-to-interpret signal to market participants and investors. In contrast, a broader and more nebulous standard—such as a “public interest” approach, which has been proposed by some academics and agency officials—could conceivably water down the information value of a finding of liability. In essence, the greater the license that regulators and courts have to condemn a business practice beyond a finding of harm to consumers, the noisier the signal to the public about what the verdict means. We can call this phenomenon “the stigma dilution effect.” To that end, we develop a formal model to gain insight into the role of reputation in the enforcement and deterrence effects of antitrust laws. The model reveals that broadening the welfare standard is likely to weaken the reputational impact of antitrust violations. This dilution can, in turn, have implications that go against what the proponents of abolishing the consumer welfare standard desire. Namely, a new standard could increase, rather than decrease, the frequency of conduct they seek to deter. Thus, our analysis suggests there may be important and underappreciated costs associated with departures from the consumer welfare standard. In fact, the presence of reputational considerations suggests that these departures can produce effects contrary to the stated goals of their proponents

Stimulated radiative laser cooling

Building a refrigerator based on the conversion of heat into optical energy is an ongoing engineering challenge. Under well-defined conditions, spontaneous anti-Stokes fluorescence of a dopant material in a host matrix is capable of lowering the host temperature. The fluorescence is conveying away a part of the thermal energy stored in the vibrational oscillations of the host lattice. In particular, applying this principle to the cooling of (solid-state) lasers opens up many potential device applications, especially in the domain of high-power lasers. In this paper, an alternative optical cooling scheme is outlined, leading to radiative cooling of solid-state lasers. It is based on converting the thermal energy stored in the host, into optical energy by means of a stimulated nonlinear process, rather than a spontaneous process. This should lead to better cooling efficiencies and a higher potential of applying the principle for device applications

Quantum bath refrigeration towards absolute zero: unattainability principle challenged

A minimal model of a quantum refrigerator (QR), i.e. a periodically phase-flipped two-level system permanently coupled to a finite-capacity bath (cold bath) and an infinite heat dump (hot bath), is introduced and used to investigate the cooling of the cold bath towards the absolute zero (T=0). Remarkably, the temperature scaling of the cold-bath cooling rate reveals that it does not vanish as T->0 for certain realistic quantized baths, e.g. phonons in strongly disordered media (fractons) or quantized spin-waves in ferromagnets (magnons). This result challenges Nernst's third-law formulation known as the unattainability principle

Twenty-seven mutations with three novel pathologenic variants causing biotinidase deficiency: a report of 203 patients from the southeastern part of Turkey

BACKGROUND: Biotinidase deficiency (BD) is an autosomal recessive inborn error of metabolism characterized by neurologic and cutaneous symptoms and can be detected by newborn screening. Newborn screening for BD was implemented in Turkey at the end of 2008. METHODS: In total, 203 patients who were identified among the infants detected by the newborn screening were later confirmed to have BD through measurement of serum biotinidase activity. We also performed BTD mutation analysis to characterize the genetic profile. RESULTS: Twenty-seven mutations were identified. The most commonly found variants were c.1330G>C (p.D444H), c.1595C>T (p.T532M), c.470G>A (p.R157H), and c.198_104delGCGGCTGinsTCC (p.C33Ffs ) with allele frequencies of 0.387, 0.175, 0.165 and 0.049, respectively. Three novel pathogenic and likely pathogenic variants were identified: p.W140* (c.419G>A), p.S319F (c.956C>T) and p.L69Hfs*24 (c.192_193insCATC). We also identified three mutations reported in just one patient in the past (p.V442Sfs*59 [c.1324delG], p.H447R [c.1340A>G] and p.198delV [c.592_594delGTC]). Although all of the patients were asymptomatic under the treatment of biotin, only one patient, who had the novel c.419G>A homozygous mutation became symptomatic during an episode of acute gastroenteritis with a presentation of ketosis and metabolic acidosis. Among the screened patients, 156 had partial and 47 had profound BD. CONCLUSIONS: We determined the mutation spectra of BD from the southeastern part of Turkey. The results of this study add three more mutations to the total number of mutations described as causing BD

Mucopolysaccharidosis Type-II with Pathognomonic Skin Appearance: A Case with Pebbling Sign

Mucopolysaccharidosis type-II (MPS-II) is an X-linked lysosomal storage disorder. Here, we report an 8-year-old boy with pebbling sign in the scapular region, coarse facies, claw hand, diastolic murmur, and hepatomegaly. With decreased iduronate-2-sulfatase activity and hemizygous mutation in the IDS gene, the diagnosis was MPS-II. Pebbling sign is a rare but pathognomonic sign of MPS-II

Clinical features of 27 Turkish Propionic acidemia patients with 12 novel mutations

Propionic acidemia (PA) is an inherited metabolic disease caused by the deficiency of one of the four biotin-dependent enzymes propionyl-CoA carboxylase (PCC), and is characterized by coma and death in unrecognized patients, additionally late diagnosis leads to severe developmental delay and neurological sequels. Manifestations of PA over time can include growth impairment, intellectual disability, seizures, basal ganglia lesions, pancreatitis, and cardiomyopathy. Other rarely reported complications include optic atrophy, hearing loss, premature ovarian insufficiency, and chronic renal failure. Mutations in PCCA-PCCB genes cause the clinically heterogeneous disease of PA. In this study, we investigate the mutation spectrum of PCCAPCCB genes and phenotypic features of 27 Turkish patients with PA from the South and Southeast parts of Turkey. We report 12 novel PA mutations, five affecting the PCCA gene and 7 affecting the PCCB gene