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Full-Text Articles in Antitrust and Trade Regulation
Reframing The (False?) Choice Between Purchaser Welfare And Total Welfare, Alan J. Meese
Reframing The (False?) Choice Between Purchaser Welfare And Total Welfare, Alan J. Meese
Faculty Publications
This Article critiques the role that the partial equilibrium trade-off paradigm plays in the debate over the definition of “consumer welfare” that courts should employ when developing and applying antitrust doctrine. The Article contends that common reliance on the paradigm distorts the debate between those who would equate “consumer welfare” with “total welfare” and those who equate consumer welfare with “purchaser welfare.” In particular, the model excludes, by fiat, the fact that new efficiencies free up resources that flow to other markets, increasing output and thus the welfare of purchasers in those markets. Moreover, the model also assumes that both …
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, …