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An Aggregate Approach To Antitrust: Using New Data And Rulemaking To Preserve Drug Competition, C. Scott Hemphill

Center for Contract and Economic Organization

This Article examines the "aggregation deficit" in antitrust: the pervasive lack of information, essential to choosing an optimal antitrust rule, about the frequency and costliness of anticompetitive activity. By synthesizing available information, the present analysis helps close the information gap for an important, unresolved issue in U.S. antitrust policy: patent settlements between brand-name drug makers and their generic rivals. The analysis draws upon a new dataset of 143 such settlements.

Due to the factual complexity of individual brand-generic settlements, important trends and arrangements become apparent only when multiple cases are examined collectively. This aggregate approach provides valuable information that can …