Experimental Economics for Antitrust Law and Policy

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Theo Normann
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Economics ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
Law And Policy

Exclusion, Invasion and Abuse: Competition Law and its Constitutional Context

2010 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 183-224
Author(s):  
Daniel Francis
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
The Third ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Political Response ◽  
Broad Type ◽  
Orthodox View

Abstract The orthodox view of antitrust, or competition, law is that it should be interpreted and enforced purely to maximise economic efficiency. This chapter argues that it is by no means so clear that the maximization of efficiency should be the sole aim of competition law, either as a matter of common-law tradition or as a matter of ‘original’ legislative intent. Moreover, such a narrow approach neglects the important social and political components and consequences of antitrust policy and adjudication. This chapter further argues that antitrust law exhibits a striking resemblance, in many ways, to constitutional law, in particular to the extent that it constitutes a social and political response, administered by courts, to three particularly problematic applications of power—the ‘exclusion, invasion and abuse’ of the title. The first section of the chapter introduces these themes. In the second section, the exclusion-invasion-abuse model is described and the implications of each broad type of rule are explored. In the third section, the historical development of modern antitrust law is traced in order to show that the ‘pure efficiency’ standard lacks any credible historical claim to particular authority or authenticity. The fourth and final section, a brief survey of competing normative accounts of antitrust law offers in order to demonstrate the extent to which a myopic focus on efficiency can occlude the underlying policy consequences of antitrust law and policy-making.

Exclusion, Invasion and Abuse: Competition Law and its Constitutional Context

2010 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 183-224
Author(s):  
Daniel Francis
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
The Third ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Political Response ◽  
Broad Type ◽  
Orthodox View

AbstractThe orthodox view of antitrust, or competition, law is that it should be interpreted and enforced purely to maximise economic efficiency. This chapter argues that it is by no means so clear that the maximization of efficiency should be the sole aim of competition law, either as a matter of common-law tradition or as a matter of ‘original’ legislative intent. Moreover, such a narrow approach neglects the important social and political components and consequences of antitrust policy and adjudication. This chapter further argues that antitrust law exhibits a striking resemblance, in many ways, to constitutional law, in particular to the extent that it constitutes a social and political response, administered by courts, to three particularly problematic applications of power—the ‘exclusion, invasion and abuse’ of the title. The first section of the chapter introduces these themes. In the second section, the exclusion-invasion-abuse model is described and the implications of each broad type of rule are explored. In the third section, the historical development of modern antitrust law is traced in order to show that the ‘pure efficiency’ standard lacks any credible historical claim to particular authority or authenticity. The fourth and final section, a brief survey of competing normative accounts of antitrust law offers in order to demonstrate the extent to which a myopic focus on efficiency can occlude the underlying policy consequences of antitrust law and policy-making.

Transnational Antitrust Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 314-328
Author(s):  
Hannah L. Buxbaum
Keyword(s):  
Antitrust Law ◽  
Market Regulation ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Globalized Economy ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
International Antitrust

In light of the significant diversity that remains among legal systems regarding the purpose and substance of market regulation, it is no surprise that efforts to develop a body of international antitrust law have failed. Instead, we rely on a diverse set of norms and transnational practices to regulate the increasingly globalized economy. This chapter discusses those practices, focusing on the actors and institutions involved. Section II addresses the production of substantive antitrust law at different levels (national, regional, and international) and discusses some of the ways in which these norms spread across legal systems. Section III turns to mechanisms for improving cooperation among legal systems in the enforcement of divergent regulatory norms, as well as to continuing sites of contestation among regimes. Section IV concludes with an analysis of the prospects for increased convergence in the field of antitrust law and policy.

The Complexity of Conversing About Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Antitrust

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 494-497
Author(s):  
Peter C. Carstensen
Keyword(s):  
Public Interest ◽  
Competition Policy ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Innovation And Entrepreneurship

The relationship between law including competition policy and the goal of advancing innovation and entrepreneurship is complex. Bert Foer’s chapter identifies the many ways that competition law and policy directly and indirectly can affect positively or negatively the advancement of that goal. The comment seeks to highlight that range and complexity by using the categories from the traditional I-O Paradigm to show where and how antitrust law and policies it seeks to advance can be used to shape the conditions, structure, and conduct in markets to facilitate outcomes that will advance the public interest in innovation and entrepreneurship.

scholarly journals Big Tech Acquisitions and the Potential Competition Doctrine: The Case of Facebook

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-60
Author(s):  
Mark Glick ◽  
Catherine Ruetschlin
Keyword(s):  
Chicago School ◽  
Structural Approach ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
Short History ◽  
Dominant Firm ◽  
Potential Competition ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Competitive Rivalry

The Big Tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple, have individually and collectively engaged in an unprecedented number of acquisitions. When a dominant firm purchases a start-up that could be a future entrant and thereby increase competitive rivalry, it raises a potential competition issue. Unfortunately, the antitrust law of potential competition mergers is ill-equipped to address tech mergers. We contend that the Chicago School’s assumptions and policy prescriptions hobbled antitrust law and policy on potential competition mergers. We illustrate this problem with the example of Facebook. Facebook has engaged in 90 completed acquisitions in its short history (documented in the Appendix to this paper). Many antitrust commentators have focused on the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions as cases of mergers that have reduced potential competition. We show the impotence of the potential competition doctrine applied to these two acquisitions. We suggest that the remedy for Chicago School damage to the potential competition doctrine is a return to an empirically tractable structural approach to potential competition mergers.

Antitrust in Moligopoly Markets

2020 ◽  
pp. 172-237
Author(s):  
Nicolas Petit
Keyword(s):  
Market Power ◽  
Monopoly Power ◽  
Market Definition ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
Competitive Pressure ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
Monopoly Rents ◽  
Structural Methods

This chapter draws the implications of the theory of moligopoly competition for antitrust law and policy. In digital industries, economic forces discounted in received theory produce socially beneficial incentives on monopoly firms to compete by indirect entry in untipped markets, when they understand that their monopoly rents in tipped markets are under pressure. Antitrust should thus focus on maintaining competitive pressure in markets that have tipped, and apply more forgiving rules towards the leveraging of market power in untipped markets. Besides, antitrust should adopt tools that allow fact finders to draw a better line between tipped and untipped markets, complementing inferences of monopoly power drawn from structural methods of market definition and evaluation of market power.

US Antitrust Law and Policy in Historical Perspective

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Phillips Sawyer
Keyword(s):  
Small Businesses ◽  
Allocative Efficiency ◽  
Consumer Welfare ◽  
The United States ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Consumer Prices ◽  
Dominant Firms ◽  
Antitrust Legislation

The key pieces of antitrust legislation in the United States—the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and the Clayton Act of 1914—contain broad language that has afforded the courts wide latitude in interpreting and enforcing the law. This article chronicles the judiciary’s shifting interpretations of antitrust law and policy over the past 125 years. It argues that jurists, law enforcement agencies, and private litigants have revised their approaches to antitrust to accommodate economic shocks, technological developments, and predominant economic wisdom. Over time an economic logic that prioritizes lowest consumer prices as a signal of allocative efficiency—known as the consumer welfare standard—has replaced the older political objectives of antitrust, such as protecting independent proprietors or small businesses, or reducing wealth transfers from consumers to producers. However, a new group of progressive activists has again called for revamping antitrust so as to revive enforcement against dominant firms, especially in digital markets, and to refocus attention on the political effects of antitrust law and policy. This shift suggests that antitrust may remain a contested field for scholarly and popular debate.

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