Law Commons^™

Who Determines The Optimal Trade-Off Between Quality And Price?, Barbara Ann White

All Faculty Scholarship

The question of the optimal trade-off between quality and price has become increasingly important as well as complex in recent times, as the advances of modern technology permit a far more refined range of choices. These subtleties among choices allow an individual, a group, or a society to titrate more precisely degrees of quality with almost any product or service, coupled, of course, with counterbalancing price consequences.

In 2002, as Program Chair of the Antitrust Section of the Association of American Law Schools, I organized a panel entitled “Guilds at the Millennium: Antitrust and the Professions” and served as one …

Price Effects Of Horizontal Mergers, Alan A. Fisher Ph.D., Frederick I. Johnson Ph.D., Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

When should the government challenge a merger that might increase market power but also generate efficiency gains? The dominant belief has been that the government and courts should evaluate these mergers solely in terms of economic efficiency. Congress, however, wanted the courts to stop any merger significantly likely to raise prices. Substantially likely efficiency gains should therefore affect the legality of mergers to the extent that they are likely to prevent price increases. This standard is more strict than the economic efficiency criterion, because the latter would permit mergers substantially likely to lead to higher prices, if sufficient efficiency gains …