Why are cellphone plans a lot more expensive in the United States than in Europe? It seems a straightforward question. But the search for a remedy had taken Thomas Philippon on an urgent journey through a few of the most complex and hotly debated problems in contemporary economics. Ultimately, he reached a unexpected bottom line: American markets, once a model for the world, are giving up on healthful competition. Sector after economic sector is even more concentrated than it had been twenty years ago, dominated by fewer about THE FANTASTIC Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets and bigger players who lobby politicians aggressively to safeguard and increase their profit margins. Across the country, this drives up prices while generating down investment, productivity, growth, and income, resulting in even more inequality. In the mean time, Europe-long dismissed for competitive sclerosis and fragile antitrust-is defeating America at its own game. Philippon, among the world’s leading economic economists, did not anticipate these conclusions in the age of Silicon Valley start-ups and millennial millionaires. But the data from his cutting-edge research proved undeniable. Within this powerful tale of financial detective work, we adhere to him as he works out the basic facts and consequences of industry focus in the U.S. and European countries, shows how lobbying and marketing campaign contributions possess defanged antitrust regulators, and considers what all this means for free of charge trade, technology, and technology. For the sake of ordinary Americans, he concludes, authorities needs to return to what it once did best: keeping the playing field level for competition.