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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Market Power Model Of Contract Formation: How Outmoded Economic Theory Still Distorts Antitrust Doctrine, Alan J. Meese
The Market Power Model Of Contract Formation: How Outmoded Economic Theory Still Distorts Antitrust Doctrine, Alan J. Meese
Faculty Publications
Transaction cost economics ("TCE") has radically altered industrial organization's explanation for so-called "non-standard contracts, "including "exclusionary" agreements that exclude rivals from access to inputs or customers. According to TCE, such integration usually reduces transaction costs without producing anticompetitive harm. TCE has accordingly exercised growing influence over antitrust doctrine, with courts invoking TCE's teachings to justify revision of some doctrines once hostile to such contracts. Still, old habits die hard, even for courts of increasing economic sophistication. This Article critiques one such habit, namely, courts'continuing claim that firms use market or monopoly power to impose exclusionary contracts on unwilling trading partners. …
Competition Policy And The Great Depression: Lessons Learned And A New Way Forward, Alan J. Meese
Competition Policy And The Great Depression: Lessons Learned And A New Way Forward, Alan J. Meese
Faculty Publications
The recent Great Recession has shaken the nation’s faith in free markets and inspired various forms of actual or proposed regulatory intervention displacing free competition. Proponents of such intervention often claim that such interference with free-market outcomes will help foster economic recovery and thus macroeconomic stability by, for instance, enhancing the “purchasing power” of workers or reducing consumer prices. Such arguments for increased economic centralization echo those made during the Great Depression, when proponents of regulatory intervention claimed that such interference with economic liberty and free competition, including suspension of the antitrust laws, was necessary to foster economic recovery. Indeed, …