Law Commons^™

Antitrust 2025, Maurice Stucke

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Antitrust policy in the United States has roughly twenty to thirty year cycles. So if past cycles are reliable indicators of future ones, we are at (or approaching) a new antitrust policy cycle, with 2025 being the approximate midpoint.

Any new policy cycle will be defined by three fundamental questions: a. What is competition? b. What are the goals of competition law? c. What should be the legal standards to promote these goals?

Rather than predict the state of antitrust policy in 2025 (such as more or less cartel enforcement), this Essay maps two scenarios based on these three fundamental …

How Do (And Should) Competition Authorities Treat A Dominant Firm's Deception?, Maurice Stucke

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This Article discusses deception and its potential anticompetitive effects. Since deception lacks any redeeming ethical, moral, or economic justifications, and trust in the marketplace is paramount, multiple laws seek to deter and punish deception. Although the federal antitrust laws seek to deter acts of unfair competition, which historically included a competitor’s deception, some federal courts, recently have erected hurdles for antitrust plaintiffs injured by a monopolist’s deception. Such hurdles are contrary to the Sherman Act's legislative aim, the common law antecedents of the Sherman Act, and other congressional policies. Moreover, the courts’ legal standards for evaluating a monopolist’s deception involving …

Lessons From The Financial Crisis, Maurice Stucke

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What lessons can we learn from the financial crisis concerning the issues of systemic risk, firms too big to fail, and the income inequality in the United States today?

In light of the public anger over the financial crisis and bailouts to firms deemed too big to fail, this Essay first addresses the issue of systemic risk posed by mergers generally and those in the financial services industries specifically. The federal government heard concerns in the 1990s about mega-mergers in the financial industry. The Department of Justice, for example, heard concerns that the Citibank-Travelers merger would create an institution too …

Money, Is That What I Want?: Competition Policy & The Role Of Behavioral Economics, Maurice Stucke

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Although the behavioral economics and happiness economic literature are hot areas in legal and economic scholarship, the U.S. policymakers, until recently, have not embraced the literature. That is changing with the financial crisis. Policymakers are re-examining the assumptions underlying many neoclassical economic theories embedded in their policies.

This article addresses one cornerstone of neoclassical economic theory, namely that rational consumers pursue their economic self-interests. It is commonly associated with Adam Smith’s famous statement: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own …

When A Monopolist Deceives, Maurice Stucke

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This essay uses one context - a monopolist’s deceptive advertising or product disparagement - to illustrate how competition authorities and courts should evaluate a monopolist’s deception under the federal antitrust laws. Competition authorities should target a monopolist’s anticompetitive deception, which courts should treat as a prima facie violation of the Sherman Act without requiring a full-blown rule of reason analysis or an arbitrary, multi-factor standard.