Articles from ProMarket at the University of Chicago Stigler Center

Roslyn Layton is a contributor to ProMarket, the policy publication of the University of Chicago Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State. Her writing examines how antitrust, competition policy, and technology regulation affect critical infrastructure, innovation, and national resilience. Across her contributions, Layton challenges concentration-focused and process-heavy regulatory approaches that overlook operational realities, incentives, and security risks—arguing instead for policies that align accountability, ownership, and performance in complex digital and physical systems. https://www.promarket.org/author/roslyn_layton/

Selected Articles in ProMarket

• How Should We Address the Amazon Web Services Outage? (November 14, 2025)
  Layton analyzes the AWS outage as an infrastructure governance problem rather than a simple market-power failure, arguing that resilience, redundancy, and accountability—not breakups—are the appropriate policy responses. She emphasizes operational risk management and incentive alignment in cloud services that underpin large portions of the digital economy.
• Did Concentration Exacerbate the CrowdStrike Outage? (August 5, 2024)
  This essay interrogates claims that market concentration caused or worsened the CrowdStrike outage, cautioning against reflexive antitrust conclusions. Layton explains how monocausal concentration narratives can obscure technical realities, deployment decisions, and responsibility for risk management in cybersecurity markets.
• A 40-Year Bipartisan Tech Policy Success Story (July 19, 2024)
  Layton highlights a rare example of durable, bipartisan technology policy that enabled innovation, competition, and global leadership over decades. She contrasts this success with contemporary regulatory impulses that favor intervention over institutional learning and performance-based governance.
• Live Nation’s Anticompetitive Conduct Is a Problem for Security (June 25, 2024)
  Linking antitrust to public safety, Layton argues that Live Nation’s conduct is not merely a competition issue but a security risk. She shows how market power, weak accountability, and poor incentives can degrade emergency preparedness and crowd safety at large-scale events.
• Patent Trolls Are Harming Innovation. Congress Can Help (March 21, 2024)
  This piece examines how abusive patent litigation distorts incentives, diverts resources from productive innovation, and harms small and mid-sized firms. Layton outlines targeted congressional reforms to restore balance to the patent system without undermining legitimate intellectual property rights.
• Zero Rating Is the Free Sample in the Internet Ice Cream Store (June 21, 2023)
  Layton defends zero-rating practices as pro-consumer and pro-competition, explaining how they expand access, reduce risk for users, and stimulate demand—particularly for low-income consumers. She challenges regulatory efforts that treat such practices as inherently anticompetitive.
• How Big Tech Uses Net Neutrality to Subvert Competition (May 18, 2023)
  This essay critiques how dominant firms strategically weaponize net-neutrality rhetoric to entrench their own market positions while limiting competition from network operators and smaller entrants. Layton argues that formal neutrality rules can mask deeper power asymmetries and distort competitive outcomes.