Read and Download eBook Full
Author: Robert Bork
Publisher:
Published: 2021-02-22
Total Pages: 536
ISBN-13: 9781736089712
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe 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.
Author: William H. Page
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2009-10-15
Total Pages: 363
ISBN-13: 0226644650
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn 1998, the United States Department of Justice and state antitrust agencies charged that Microsoft was monopolizing the market for personal computer operating systems. More than ten years later, the case is still the defining antitrust litigation of our era. William H. Page and John E. Lopatka’s The Microsoft Case contributes to the debate over the future of antitrust policy by examining the implications of the litigation from the perspective of consumer welfare. The authors trace the development of the case from its conceptual origins through the trial and the key decisions on both liability and remedies. They argue that, at critical points, the legal system failed consumers by overrating government’s ability to influence outcomes in a dynamic market. This ambitious book is essential reading for business, law, and economics scholars as well as anyone else interested in the ways that technology, economics, and antitrust law have interacted in the digital age. “This book will become the gold standard for analysis of the monopolization cases against Microsoft. . . . No serious student of law or economic policy should go without reading it.”—Thomas C. Arthur, Emory University
Author: Lahcen Achy
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Published: 2016-09-30
Total Pages: 305
ISBN-13: 1784717231
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe fundamental goal of competition law is to support productivity and innovativeness; in fact, the short-term effect of enforcement actions is often a reduction in product prices. This book reports the findings of consumer market studies into a range of goods and services in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It finds a pervasive lack of competition in those markets, which not only reduces the standard of living of consumers, including poor and vulnerable groups, but also softens the incentives on firms to improve the efficiency of their operations and the quality of their products
Author: Fred S. McChesney
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1995-03-15
Total Pages: 426
ISBN-13: 9780226556352
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhy has antitrust legislation not lived up to its promise of promoting free-market competition and protecting consumers? Assessing 100 years of antitrust policy in the United States, this book shows that while the antitrust laws claim to serve the public good, they are as vulnerable to the influence of special interest groups as are agricultural, welfare, or health care policies. Presenting classic studies and new empirical research, the authors explain how antitrust caters to self-serving business interests at the expense of the consumer. The contributors are Peter Asch, George Bittlingmayer, Donald J. Boudreaux, Malcolm B. Coate, Louis De Alessi, Thomas J. DiLorenzo, B. Epsen Eckbo, Robert B. Ekelund, Jr., Roger L. Faith, Richard S. Higgins, William E. Kovacic, Donald R. Leavens, William F. Long, Fred S. McChesney, Mike McDonald, Stephen Parker, Richard A. Posner, Paul H. Rubin, Richard Schramm, Joseph J. Seneca, William F. Shughart II, Jon Silverman, George J. Stigler, Robert D. Tollison, Charlie M. Weir, Peggy Wier, and Bruce Yandle.
Author: Jonathan B. Baker
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2019-05-06
Total Pages: 369
ISBN-13: 0674975782
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA 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.
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"--
Author: Mark Steiner
Publisher: Universal-Publishers
Published: 2007
Total Pages: 200
ISBN-13: 1581123701
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn the field of antitrust, the freedoms to contract and compete can and do contradict. Profit-maximizing companies desire perfectly competitive input markets to minimize their costs, but want monopolistic markets for their outputs to maximize their profits. Consequently, they have strong incentives to undermine competition in their output markets. In a world without antitrust laws, many companies would thus eliminate competition by using their freedom to contract, either by entering into legally enforceable agreements which fix prices or divide up markets, or by merging and acquiring rivals to gain market control. Therefore, guaranteeing and safeguarding companies' abilities to compete comes at the cost of restricting their freedoms to contract. The states role in this task is a delicate one though: government intervention itself necessarily limits the economic freedom of individuals and firms, and limiting the freedom of contract has potentially detrimental effects on economic activity as well. Hence, antitrust policy must find the right balance between the two freedoms of competition and contract, allowing competition to flourish while upholding the contractual freedoms necessary for a functioning market. The policies in the U.S. and Europe used to protect competition with per se rules, setting clear boundaries for the freedom to contract where it interfered with the freedom to compete. Over the past decades, improvements in economic analysis provided measurable dimensions for 'competition' through measures like efficiency and welfare. With these new and complex economic tools, the aim of an antitrust policy moved away from an 'indirect' mechanism which provided and enforced a strict framework of negative per se rules within which the competitive process was allowed to happen. The current policies directly aim at promoting welfare by attempting to 'balance' the welfare effects of individual business practices, permitting contracts or mergers with benign effects and prohibiting contracts with detrimental effects on welfare in potentially every case. These economic insights have promoted a better understanding of the competitive process and contributed to improved antitrust rules. However, in the actual enforcement of antitrust laws, recent developments caused by the influence of economic analysis have had a detrimental impact on antitrust policy in both the U.S. and the EU. First, it increased the discretion of competition authorities, lowering legal certainty for companies and increasing the potential for wrong decisions. Second, it gave companies incentives to waste resources on rent seeking activities by using economic analyses to demonstrate efficiencies in complicated and timely investigations and litigation. And third, the predominant use of economic analysis has massively increased the costs of enforcement. This thesis is the first one to depict these negative effects caused by recent developments and shows that a policy with clear limitations through proposed per se rules would be superior for it would eliminate the illustrated negative effects.
Author: Giuliano Amato
Publisher: Hart Publishing
Published: 1997-10-19
Total Pages: 148
ISBN-13: 1901362299
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExamines dilemmas surrounding antitrust law and public and private power and the ways in which these problems have been addressed by legislatures and courts in the US and in Europe. Offers sometimes controversial observations on the history and doctrines of antitrust law, and conclusions as to how successfully the dilemma is being managed by the economies of the US and Europe. Amato is head of the Italian Antitrust Authority, a professor of law at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and a former Prime Minister of Italy. Distributed by ISBS. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author: John Kwoka
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2015
Total Pages: 283
ISBN-13: 0262028484
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA comprehensive analysis of merger outcomes based on all empirical studies, with an assessment of the effectiveness of antitrust policy toward mergers. In recent decades, antitrust investigations and cases targeting mergers—including those involving Google, Ticketmaster, and much of the domestic airline industry—have reshaped industries and changed business practices profoundly. And yet there has been a relative dearth of detailed evaluations of the effects of mergers and the effectiveness of merger policy. In this book, John Kwoka, a noted authority on industrial organization, examines all reliable empirical studies of the effect of specific mergers and develops entirely new information about the policies and remedies of antitrust agencies regarding these mergers. Combined with data on outcomes, this policy information enables analysis of, and creates new insights into, mergers, merger policies, and the effectiveness of remedies in preventing anticompetitive outcomes. After an overview of mergers, merger policy, and a common approach to merger analysis, Kwoka offers a detailed analysis of the studied mergers, relevant policies, and chosen remedies. Kwoka finds, first and foremost, that most of the studied mergers resulted in competitive harm, usually in the form of higher product prices but also with respect to various non-price outcomes. Other important findings include the fact that joint ventures and code sharing arrangements do not result in such harm and that policies intended to remedy mergers—especially conduct remedies—are not generally effective in restraining price increases. The book's uniquely comprehensive analysis advances our understanding of merger decisions and policies, suggests policy improvements for competition agencies and remedies, and points the way to future research.
Author: Herbert HOVENKAMP
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2009-06-30
Total Pages: 392
ISBN-13: 9780674038820
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAfter 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.
