The Antitrust Paradigm
The Antitrust Paradigm

Author: Jonathan B. Baker

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-05-06

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0674975782

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A new and urgently needed guide to making the American economy more competitive at a time when tech giants have amassed vast market power. The U.S. economy is growing less competitive. Large businesses increasingly profit by taking advantage of their customers and suppliers. These firms can also use sophisticated pricing algorithms and customer data to secure substantial and persistent advantages over smaller players. In our new Gilded Age, the likes of Google and Amazon fill the roles of Standard Oil and U.S. Steel. Jonathan Baker shows how business practices harming competition manage to go unchecked. The law has fallen behind technology, but that is not the only problem. Inspired by Robert Bork, Richard Posner, and the “Chicago school,” the Supreme Court has, since the Reagan years, steadily eroded the protections of antitrust. The Antitrust Paradigm demonstrates that Chicago-style reforms intended to unleash competitive enterprise have instead inflated market power, harming the welfare of workers and consumers, squelching innovation, and reducing overall economic growth. Baker identifies the errors in economic arguments for staying the course and advocates for a middle path between laissez-faire and forced deconcentration: the revival of pro-competitive economic regulation, of which antitrust has long been the backbone. Drawing on the latest in empirical and theoretical economics to defend the benefits of antitrust, Baker shows how enforcement and jurisprudence can be updated for the high-tech economy. His prescription is straightforward. The sooner courts and the antitrust enforcement agencies stop listening to the Chicago school and start paying attention to modern economics, the sooner Americans will reap the benefits of competition.

The Antitrust Paradigm
The Antitrust Paradigm

Author: Jonathan B. Baker

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-05-06

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0674238958

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A new and urgently needed guide to making the American economy more competitive at a time when tech giants have amassed vast market power. The U.S. economy is growing less competitive. Large businesses increasingly profit by taking advantage of their customers and suppliers. These firms can also use sophisticated pricing algorithms and customer data to secure substantial and persistent advantages over smaller players. In our new Gilded Age, the likes of Google and Amazon fill the roles of Standard Oil and U.S. Steel. Jonathan Baker shows how business practices harming competition manage to go unchecked. The law has fallen behind technology, but that is not the only problem. Inspired by Robert Bork, Richard Posner, and the “Chicago school,” the Supreme Court has, since the Reagan years, steadily eroded the protections of antitrust. The Antitrust Paradigm demonstrates that Chicago-style reforms intended to unleash competitive enterprise have instead inflated market power, harming the welfare of workers and consumers, squelching innovation, and reducing overall economic growth. Baker identifies the errors in economic arguments for staying the course and advocates for a middle path between laissez-faire and forced deconcentration: the revival of pro-competitive economic regulation, of which antitrust has long been the backbone. Drawing on the latest in empirical and theoretical economics to defend the benefits of antitrust, Baker shows how enforcement and jurisprudence can be updated for the high-tech economy. His prescription is straightforward. The sooner courts and the antitrust enforcement agencies stop listening to the Chicago school and start paying attention to modern economics, the sooner Americans will reap the benefits of competition.

The Antitrust Paradigm
The Antitrust Paradigm

Author: Jonathan B. Baker

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 9780674238961

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the 1970s, when the United States economy was struggling and the term "stagflation" was coined to capture inflation plus stagnant business growth, the "Chicago school" critique of antitrust rules gained ascendance. In the 1980s, during Ronald Reagan's two terms as president, that critique's policy prescriptions-the eliminating of or modifying anticompetitive rules to make them less restrictive-became common practice. As Jonathan Baker writes, "The Chicago approach to antitrust can be understood as a gamble. More relaxed antitrust rules would allow firms to achieve greater efficiencies, which would more than compensate for any risk of firms exercising market power. Put differently, the Chicagoans bet that antitrust reform could achieve long term consumer welfare gains without facilitating the creation of substantial and durable market power." The Antitrust Paradigm presents a wealth of evidence arguing that the Chicagoans lost their bet, and prescribes what should be done about it. Since the 1980s, not only has market power widened, economic productivity decline, and consumer welfare gains been modest at best, but also the economy has changed, most visibly in the information technology and Internet giants that top the financial market's valuation charts. Baker argues that both the failures of antitrust reform and the changed economy demand a new antitrust paradigm, one that restores a competitive economy through strengthened antitrust, recognizes antitrust's political context, and identifies the competitive harms from dominant information technology platforms. His book frames the problem, examines the distinctive competitive problems of the information economy, and concludes with a guide for restoring effective antitrust policies.--

A Guide to Federal Agency Rulemaking
A Guide to Federal Agency Rulemaking

Author: Jeffrey S. Lubbers

Publisher: American Bar Association

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 736

ISBN-13: 9781590317068

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A concise but thorough resource, the guide provides a time-saving reference for the latest case law, and the most recent legislation affecting rulemaking.

The Antitrust Enterprise
The Antitrust Enterprise

Author: Herbert HOVENKAMP

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 9780674038820

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

After thirty years, the debate over antitrust's ideology has quieted. Most now agree that the protection of consumer welfare should be the only goal of antitrust laws. Execution, however, is another matter. The rules of antitrust remain unfocused, insufficiently precise, and excessively complex. The problem of poorly designed rules is severe, because in the short run rules weigh much more heavily than principles. At bottom, antitrust is a defensible enterprise only if it can make the microeconomy work better, after accounting for the considerable costs of operating the system. The Antitrust Enterprise is the first authoritative and compact exposition of antitrust law since Robert Bork's classic The Antitrust Paradox was published more than thirty years ago. It confronts not only the problems of poorly designed, overly complex, and inconsistent antitrust rules but also the current disarray of antitrust's rule of reason, offering a coherent and workable set of solutions. The result is an antitrust policy that is faithful to the consumer welfare principle but that is also more readily manageable by the federal courts and other antitrust tribunals.

Antitrust Law in the New Economy
Antitrust Law in the New Economy

Author: Mark R. Patterson

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2017-02-01

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0674971426

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Markets run on information. Buyers make decisions by relying on their knowledge of the products available, and sellers decide what to produce based on their understanding of what buyers want. But the distribution of market information has changed, as consumers increasingly turn to sources that act as intermediaries for information—companies like Yelp and Google. Antitrust Law in the New Economy considers a wide range of problems that arise around one aspect of information in the marketplace: its quality. Sellers now have the ability and motivation to distort the truth about their products when they make data available to intermediaries. And intermediaries, in turn, have their own incentives to skew the facts they provide to buyers, both to benefit advertisers and to gain advantages over their competition. Consumer protection law is poorly suited for these problems in the information economy. Antitrust law, designed to regulate powerful firms and prevent collusion among producers, is a better choice. But the current application of antitrust law pays little attention to information quality. Mark Patterson discusses a range of ways in which data can be manipulated for competitive advantage and exploitation of consumers (as happened in the LIBOR scandal), and he considers novel issues like “confusopoly” and sellers’ use of consumers’ personal information in direct selling. Antitrust law can and should be adapted for the information economy, Patterson argues, and he shows how courts can apply antitrust to address today’s problems.

United States v. Apple
United States v. Apple

Author: Chris Sagers

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-09-17

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 067497221X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

One of the most-followed antitrust cases of recent times—United States v. Apple—reveals an often-missed truth: what Americans most fear is competition itself. In 2012 the Department of Justice accused Apple and five book publishers of conspiring to fix ebook prices. The evidence overwhelmingly showed an unadorned price-fixing conspiracy that cost consumers hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet before, during, and after the trial millions of Americans sided with the defendants. Pundits on the left and right condemned the government for its decision to sue, decrying Amazon’s market share, railing against a new high-tech economy, and rallying to defend beloved authors and publishers. For many, Amazon was the one that should have been put on trial. But why? One fact went unrecognized and unreckoned with: in practice, Americans have long been ambivalent about competition. Chris Sagers, a renowned antitrust expert, meticulously pulls apart the misunderstandings and exaggerations that industries as diverse as mom-and-pop grocers and producers of cast-iron sewer pipes have cited to justify colluding to forestall competition. In each of these cases, antitrust law, a time-honored vehicle to promote competition, is put on the defensive. Herein lies the real insight of United States v. Apple. If we desire competition as a policy, we must make peace with its sometimes rough consequences. As bruising as markets in their ordinary operation often seem, letting market forces play out has almost always benefited the consumer. United States v. Apple shows why supporting cases that protect price competition, even when doing so hurts some of us, is crucial if antitrust law is to protect and maintain markets.

The Antitrust Paradox
The Antitrust Paradox

Author: Robert Bork

Publisher:

Published: 2021-02-22

Total Pages: 536

ISBN-13: 9781736089712

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The most important book on antitrust ever written. It shows how antitrust suits adversely affect the consumer by encouraging a costly form of protection for inefficient and uncompetitive small businesses.

The Curse of Bigness
The Curse of Bigness

Author: Tim Wu

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 9780999745465

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From the man who coined the term "net neutrality" and who has made significant contributions to our understanding of antitrust policy and wireless communications, comes a call for tighter antitrust enforcement and an end to corporate bigness.

How Antitrust Failed Workers
How Antitrust Failed Workers

Author: Eric A. Posner

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 019750762X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Antitrust law has very rarely been used by workers to challenge anticompetitive employment practices. Yet recent empirical research shows that labor markets are highly concentrated, and that employers engage in practices that harm competition and suppress wages. These practices include no-poaching agreements, wage-fixing, mergers, covenants not to compete, and misclassification of gig workers as independent contractors. This failure of antitrust to challenge labor-market misbehavior is due to a range of other failures-intellectual, political, moral, and economic. And the impact of this failure has been profound for wage levels, economic growth, and inequality. In light of the recent empirical work, it is urgent for regulators, courts, lawyers, and Congress to redirect antitrust resources to labor market problems. This book offers a strategy for judicial and legislative reform"--