A Careful Examination of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster Merger

As great admirers of The Boss and as fans of live entertainment, we share in the popular dismay over rising ticket prices for live performances. But we have been asked as antitrust scholars to examine the proposed merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, and we do so with the objectivity and honesty called for by The Boss’s quotes above. The proposed merger has been the target of aggressive attacks from several industry commentators and popular figures, but the legal and policy question is whether the transaction is at odds with the nation’s antitrust laws. One primary source of concern to critics is that Ticketmaster and Live Nation are two leading providers of ticket distribution services, and these critics argue that the merged entity would have a combined market share that is presumptively anticompetitive. We observe, however, that this transaction is taking place within a rapidly changing industry. The spread of Internet technologies has transformed the entertainment industry, and along with it the ticket distribution business such that a reliance on market shares based on historical sales is misleading. A growing number of venues, aided by a competitive bidding process that creates moments of focused competition, can now acquire the requisite capabilities to distribute tickets to their own events and can thus easily forgo reliance upon providers of outsourced distribution services. If self-distribution is an available and attractive option for venues, as it appears to be, then it is unlikely that even a monopolist provider of fully outsourced ticketing services could exercise market power. Ultimately, a proper assessment of the horizontal effects of this merger would have to weigh heavily the emerging role of Internet technologies in this dynamic business and the industry-wide trend towards self-distribution. The second category of arguments by critics opposing the merger rests on claims that vertical aspects of the transaction would produce anticompetitive effects. Indeed, Ticketmaster’s and Live Nation’s core businesses are in successive markets, and thus the proposed transaction is primarily a vertical merger, but there is broad agreement among economists and antitrust authorities that vertical mergers rarely introduce competitive concerns and are usually driven by efficiency motivations. This wealth of academic scholarship, which is reflected in current antitrust law, has not - from our vantage point - been properly incorporated into the public dialogue concerning the proposed merger. To the contrary, critics articulate concerns, including the fears that the merger would lead to the leveraging of market power and the foreclosure of downstream competition, that are refuted by accepted scholarship. Moreover, there are a number of specific efficiencies that, consistent with economic and organizational theory, are likely to emerge from a Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger and would be unlikely but for the companies’ integration. For these reasons, we submit this analysis in an effort to inform the debate with current economic and legal scholarship

P-n junctions formed in gallium antimonide

Vapor phase deposition process forms a heavily doped n-region on a melt-grown p-type gallium antimonide substrate. HCl transports gallium to the reaction zone, where it combines with antimony hydride and the dopant carrier, hydrogen telluride. Temperatures as low as 400 degrees C are required

Growth of single-crystal gallium nitride

Use of ultrahigh purity ammonia prevents oxygen contamination of GaN during growth, making it possible to grow the GaN at temperatures as high as 825 degrees C, at which point single crystal wafers are deposited on /0001/-oriented sapphire surfaces

Vapor Phase Growth Technique and System for Several III-V Compound Semiconductors Interim Scientific Report

Vapor phase crystal growth and preparation of gallium, indium, arsenic, phosphorous, and antimony alloy semiconductor material

Vapor phase growth technique and system for several 3-5 compound semiconductors Quarterly technical report

Single vapor phase growth system for preparing semiconductor material

Investigation of the free flow electrophoretic process

The effects of gravity on the free flow electrophoretic process was demonstrated. The free flow electrophoresis chamber used to demonstrate the effects of gravity on the process was of a proprietary design. This chamber was 120 cm long, 16 cm wide, and 0.15 cm thick. Flow in this chamber was in the upward direction and exited through 197 outlets at the top of the chamber. During electrophoresis a stream of sample was injected into the flow near the bottom of the chamber and an electrical field was applied across the width of the chamber. The field caused a lateral force on particles in the sample proportional to the inherent change of the particle and the electric field strength. Particle lateral velocity was then dependent on the force due to viscous drag which was proportional to particle size and particle shape dependent

Investigation of the free flow electrophoretic process. Volume 1: Executive summary

The effect of gravity on the free flow electrophoretic process was investigated. The demonstrated effects were then compared with predictions made by mathematical models. Results show that the carrier buffer flow was affected by gravity induced thermal convection and that the movement of the separating particle streams was affected by gravity induced buoyant forces. It was determined that if gravity induced buoyant forces were included in the mathematical models, then effective predictions of electrophoresis chamber separation performance were possible

Quenched Hadron Spectrum and Decay Constants on the lattice

In this talk we present the results obtained from a study of ${\cal O}(2000)$ (quenched) lattice configurations from the APE collaboration, at $6.0\le\beta\le 6.4$, using both the Wilson and the SW-Clover fermion action. We determine the light hadronic spectrum and the meson decay constants. For the light-light systems we find an agreement with the experimental data of $\sim 5$ for mesonic masses and $\sim 10$ for baryonic masses and pseudoscalar decay constants; a larger deviation is present for the vector decay constants. For the heavy-light decay constants we find $f_{D_s}=237 \pm 16 MeV, f_{D} = 221 \pm 17 MeV (f_{D_s}/f_D=1.07(4)), f_{B_s} = 205 \pm 35 MeV, f_{B} = 180 \pm 32 MeV (f_{B_s}/f_B=1.14(8))$, in good agreement with previous estimates.Comment: 8 pages, latex, Talk given at XXV ITEP Winter School of Physics, Moscow - Russia, 18-27 Feb 199

Measurement of the Branching Fractions for D^0 → π^-e^+v_e and D^0 → + K^-e^+V_e and Determination of │V_(cd)/V_(cs)│^2

Measurements of the exclusive branching fractions B(D^0→π^-e^+ν_e) and B(D^0→K^-e^+ν_e), using data collected at the ψ(3770) with the Mark III detector at the SLAC e^+e^- storage ring SPEAR, are used to determine the ratio of the Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix elements │V_(cd)/V_(cs)│^2 =0.057_(-0.015)^(+0.038)±0.005