Interlocking Directorates and the Antitrust Laws: A Conversation Between Roger Noll and Mark Lemley, Jerry S. Cohen Award Winner for Antitrust Scholarship

In this episode of Ruled by Reason, guest host Roger Noll, Professor of Economics Emeritus at Stanford University and a member of the Jerry S. Cohen Award Selection Committee, sits down with Mark Lemley, the William H. Neukom Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. The two discuss Professor Lemley's award-winning article, Anticompetitive Directors, 125 Colum. L. Rev. 1939 (2025), co-authored with Professor Rory Van Loo of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Lane Miles, a 2025 graduate of Stanford Law School. The article won the 24th Annual Jerry S. Cohen Memorial Fund Writing Award, presented on June 4 at AAI's 2026 Annual Policy Conference, Competition Policy, Journalism, and the Promotion of Truth Regarding Public Matters. The article provides the first large-scale analysis of interlocking directorates involving both public and private companies and finds 2,309 instances of individuals sitting on the boards of companies that are direct competitors. It meaningfully advances our understanding of the scope and competitive significance of interlocking boards, while proposing legal and structural reforms to address the problem.