Author: Jonathan B. Baker
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674975782
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 369
Get Book Here
Book Description
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.
Author: Jonathan B. Baker
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674238958
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 369
Get Book Here
Book Description
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.
Author: Jonathan B. Baker
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780674238961
Category : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
Languages : en
Pages : 349
Get Book Here
Book Description
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.--
Author: Herbert HOVENKAMP
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674038820
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Get Book Here
Book Description
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.
Author: Mark R. Patterson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674971426
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 330
Get Book Here
Book Description
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.
Author: Chris Sagers
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067497221X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Get Book Here
Book Description
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.
Author: Robert Bork
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781736089712
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 536
Get Book Here
Book Description
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.
Author: Eric A. Posner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019750762X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Get Book Here
Book Description
Antitrust laws are traditionally used to attack monopolies like Facebook and Google who are able to either charge high prices or degrade the quality of their services because customers cannot switch to competitors. Antitrust laws are also used to attack cartels of businesses, which fix prices. In recent years, it has become clear that firms with market power not only charge higher prices. They also suppress wages, injuring workers. In this book, Eric Posner describeshow workers can use antitrust law to counter employer market power and obtain higher wages as a result.
Author: Tim Wu
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780999745465
Category : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
Languages : en
Pages : 154
Get Book Here
Book Description
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.
Author: Fred S. McChesney
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226556345
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 396
Get Book Here
Book Description
Why 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.
