Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons^™

Assessing Amateurism In College Sports, Casey E. Faucon

Washington and Lee Law Review

College sports generate approximately $8 billion each year for the National C[artel] Athletic Association and its member institutions. Most of this revenue flows from lucrative television broadcasting deals, which often incorporate the right to commercialize and sell the names, images, and likenesses of college athletes. Under its current revenue scheme, student-athletes—85 percent of whom live below the poverty line—receive a share of zero. For over a century, we’ve justified this exploitative distribution scheme under a cloak of student-athlete “amateurism.” Antitrust challenges to the NCAA’s amateurism rules clash with the assumption that “amateurism” is a revered tradition and an important tenet …

Race-Ing Antitrust, Bennett Capers, Greg Day

Scholarly Works

Antitrust law has a race problem. To spot an antitrust violation, courts inquire into whether an act has degraded consumer welfare. Since anticompetitive practices are often assumed to enhance consumer welfare, antitrust offenses are rarely found. Key to this framework is that antitrust treats all consumers monolithically; that consumers are differently situated, especially along lines of race, simply is ignored.

We argue that antitrust law must disaggregate the term “consumer” to include those who disproportionately suffer from anticompetitive practices via a community welfare standard. As a starting point, we demonstrate that anticompetitive conduct has specifically been used as a tool …

The Necessity In Antitrust Law, Gregory Day

Washington and Lee Law Review

Antitrust rarely, if ever, gives primacy to a dispute’s subject matter. For instance, exclusionary conduct that raises the price of a lifesaving drug receives the same analysis as a restraint of baseball cards. Since antitrust’s purpose is to promote consumer welfare, the equal treatment of important and mundane goods might appear perplexing. After all, competition to produce affordable foods, medicines, and other necessities would seem to foster consumer welfare more than inane products do.

In fact, defendants generally win antitrust lawsuits even when monopolizing necessities because the primary method of antitrust review is notably deferential to defendants. To explain this …

Reinvigorating Criminal Antitrust?, D. Daniel Sokol

D. Daniel Sokol

Contemporary rhetoric surrounding antitrust in an age of populism has potential implications with regard to criminal antitrust enforcement. In areas such as resale price maintenance, monopolization, and Robinson-Patman violations, antitrust criminalization remains the law on the books. Antitrust populists and traditional antitrust thinkers who embrace a singular economic goal of antitrust push to enforce antitrust law that is already “on the books.” A natural extension of enforcement by the antitrust populists would be to advocate the use of criminal sanctions, outside of collusion, for various antitrust violations which are “on the books” but have not been used in over a …

Cartel Practices And Policies In The World War Ii Era, Caleb Yoken

Honors Theses

The goal of this thesis is to examine cartels in the World War II era: how and why they operated, why they existed, and any assistance they may or may not have received from their respective governments. This thesis, in particular, will focus on three countries, the United States, Germany, and Britain. Cartels are typically defined through the lens of monopolized business activity that can deal with anything from petroleum and steel to pharmaceuticals, and take actions to restrict output and raise prices to eliminate their competition. The research finds that cartels that operated in Europe during this era were …

Given Today's New Wave Of Protectionsim, Is Antitrust Law The Last Hope For Preserving A Free Global Economy Or Another Nail In Free Trade's Coffin?, Allison Murray

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reinvigorating Criminal Antitrust?, D. Daniel Sokol

UF Law Faculty Publications

Contemporary rhetoric surrounding antitrust in an age of populism has potential implications with regard to criminal antitrust enforcement. In areas such as resale price maintenance, monopolization, and Robinson-Patman violations, antitrust criminalization remains the law on the books. Antitrust populists and traditional antitrust thinkers who embrace a singular economic goal of antitrust push to enforce antitrust law that is already “on the books.” A natural extension of enforcement by the antitrust populists would be to advocate the use of criminal sanctions, outside of collusion, for various antitrust violations which are “on the books” but have not been used in over a …

A Neo-Chicago Approach To Concerted Action, William H. Page

William H. Page

In this article, I offer an approach to concerted action that builds on traditional Chicago School analyses of the issue, but adds a focus on the role of communication. Chicago scholars uniformly identify cartels as the primary target of antitrust enforcement. They have also established much of the framework within which courts and economists analyze concerted action. George Stigler’s seminal theory of oligopoly, which sought to identify the determinants of effective collusion, has spawned an enormous literature in game theory that models the pricing behavior of oligopolists. Richard Posner’s early analysis of tacit collusion - rivals’ coordination of noncompetitive pricing …

Objective And Subjective Theories Of Concerted Action, William H. Page

William H. Page

Communication is useful and often necessary for rivals to coordinate price and output decisions. All would agree that evidence of communication on these issues is relevant to the issue of whether firms reached an illegal agreement or engaged in concerted action in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. Most courts and commentators would go further and define agreement and concerted action to require communication of one kind or another. I call this view the objective theory of concerted action. Louis Kaplow has recently challenged this approach in three important articles, all of which argue that the focus on …

League Structure & Stadium Rent Seeking - The Role Of Antitrust Revisited, David Haddock, Tonja Jacobi, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

Professional North American sporting teams receive enormous pub for new and renovated stadiums after threatening to depart their hometowns, or by actually moving elsewhere. In contrast, English sporting teams neither receive much public money for such projects, nor move towns. This Article argues that no inherent cultural or political transatlantic variations cause the differences; rather, it is the industrial organization of sports in the two countries-the structure of league control-that enables rent-seeking by American teams but not by their English counterparts. Cross-country time series data contrasting American professional football and baseball stadiums with English soccer grounds support our claim, as …

Objective And Subjective Theories Of Concerted Action, William H. Page

UF Law Faculty Publications

Communication is useful and often necessary for rivals to coordinate price and output decisions. All would agree that evidence of communication on these issues is relevant to the issue of whether firms reached an illegal agreement or engaged in concerted action in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. Most courts and commentators would go further and define agreement and concerted action to require communication of one kind or another. I call this view the objective theory of concerted action. Louis Kaplow has recently challenged this approach in three important articles, all of which argue that the focus on …

Cartels As Rational Business Strategy: Crime Pays, John M. Connor, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

This article is the first to analyze whether cartel sanctions are optimal. The conventional wisdom is that the current level of sanctions is adequate or excessive. The article demonstrates, however, that the combined level of current United States cartel sanctions is only 9% to 21% as large as it should be to protect potential victims of cartelization optimally. Consequently, the average level of United States anti-cartel sanctions should be approximately quintupled.

The United States imposes a diverse arsenal of sanctions against collusion: criminal fines and restitution payments for the firms involved and prison, house arrest and fines for the corporate …

Beyond Detection: The Management Of Cartel Cases, Carlos Emmanuel Joppert Ragazzo, Diogo Thomson De Andrade

carlos ragazzo

No abstract provided.

Screens In The Gas Retail Market: The Brazilian Experience, Carlos Emmanuel Joppert Ragazzo

carlos ragazzo

No abstract provided.

A Neo-Chicago Approach To Concerted Action, William H. Page

UF Law Faculty Publications

In this article, I offer an approach to concerted action that builds on traditional Chicago School analyses of the issue, but adds a focus on the role of communication. Chicago scholars uniformly identify cartels as the primary target of antitrust enforcement. They have also established much of the framework within which courts and economists analyze concerted action. George Stigler’s seminal theory of oligopoly, which sought to identify the determinants of effective collusion, has spawned an enormous literature in game theory that models the pricing behavior of oligopolists. Richard Posner’s early analysis of tacit collusion - rivals’ coordination of noncompetitive pricing …

American Needle And The Boundaries Of The Firm In Antitrust Law, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

In American Needle the Supreme Court unanimously held that for the practice at issue the NFL should be treated as a “combination” of its teams rather than a single entity. However, the arrangement must be assessed under the rule of reason. The opinion, written by Justice Stevens, was almost certainly his last opinion for the Court in an antitrust case; Justice Stevens had been a dissenter in the Supreme Court’s Copperweld decision 25 years earlier, which held that a parent corporation and its wholly owned subsidiary constituted a single “firm” for antitrust purposes. The Sherman Act speaks to this issue …

All Of The Economic Aid The U.S., Eu, And Japan Give To The Developing World Is Stolen Back By Our Illegal Price-Fixing Cartels, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

This compares the magnitudes of two forms of economic interaction between the developed and developing world. The first is the amount of economic foreign aid provided by the developed world to the developing world during a single year. The second is an estimate of the yearly amount that illegal price fixing cartels, comprised of companies from the U.S., the EU, and Japan, overcharge – steal! – from purchasers in these same countries. This comparison shows these amounts are roughly equivalent. If anything, cartels probably steal more from the developing world than the developed world gives them in economic assistance.

This …

The Insurance Industry's Antitrust Immunity, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

The 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act provides that federal legislation generally, including the antitrust laws, is “applicable to the business of insurance [only] to the extent that such business is not regulated by State law.” The statute was enacted after United States v. South Eastern Underwriters Assn. (1944), held that insurance transactions were “interstate commerce” and thus subject to the antitrust laws. That case had in turn undermined the traditional view expressed in Paul v. Virginia (1868), that insurance was not interstate commerce, but strictly local transactions. The South Eastern case followed in turn upon the Supreme Court's decision in Wickard v. …

Aproximación A La Implementación De Los Programas De Clemencia Como Instrumentos Del Derecho De La Competencia (Approach To The Implementation Of Leniency Programs As Competition Law Instruments), Jesús A. Soto

Jesús Alfonso Soto Pineda

En el presente escrito se expone como una realidad del mercado, la presencia de acuerdos restrictivos de la libre competencia. Se presentan las políticas de clemencia como instrumento efectivo del Derecho en el combate contra el Cartel y las prácticas colusorias. Se realiza un análisis comparativo de una elección de territorios que han implementado los programas de clemencia y se estructuran los inconvenientes que comúnmente afectan dicho sistema, así como los paliativos escogidos que han generado un mayor nivel de eficacia en el mismo. Los aprendizajes logrados en torno a la implementación de programas de clemencia en pasos ya recorridos …

Teoria Unificada Da Colusão: Uma Sugestão De Regulação Dos, Ivo T. Gico

Ivo Teixeira Gico Jr.

A legislação concorrencial brasileira caracteriza toda e qualquer forma de abuso do poder econômico como uma infração à ordem econômica. A principal conduta delitiva é a formação de cartel. A maior dificuldade na implementação de uma política pública contrária à cartelização dos mercados é a caracterização jurídica de um acordo entre concorrentes, principalmente, no contexto oligopolístico. Nossa hipótese é a seguinte: se a lei brasileira não exige a presença de um acordo para a caracterização do delito administrativo, deveria ser juridicamente possível condenar a coordenação indevida de ações entre concorrentes mesmo na ausência de acordo. Não obstante, como a colusão …

Cartel Overcharges And Optimal Cartel Fines, John M. Connor, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines whether the current penalties in the United States Sentencing Guidelines are set at the appropriate levels to deter illegal price fixing cartels optimally. The authors analyze two data sets to determine how high on average cartels raise prices. The first consists of every published scholarly economic study of the effects of cartels on prices in individual cases. The second consists of every final verdict in a U.S. antitrust case in which a neutral finder of fact reported collusive overcharges. They report average overcharges of 49% and 31% for the two data sets, and median overcharges of 25% …

How High Do Cartels Raise Prices? Implications For Optimal Cartel Fines, John M. Connor, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines whether the current penalties in the United States Sentencing Guidelines are set at the appropriate levels to deter cartels optimally The authors analyze two data sets to determine how high on average cartels raise prices. The first consists of every published scholarly economic study of the effects of cartels on prices in individual cases. The second consists of every final verdict in a US. antitrust case in which a neutral finder of fact reported collusive overcharges. They report average overcharges of 49% and 31% for the two data sets, and median overcharges of 25% and 22%. They …

The Comparative Analysis On The Presumption Of Cartel Agreements Which Is Unique In The Korean Cartel Regulation Provision, Woo-Jong Jon

ExpressO

In terms of cartel regulation, Korea has a “presumption of agreement” provision that does not exist in the United States or in the European Union (EU). This provision is Article 19(5) of the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act (MRFTA). This provision was created for the convenience of enforcement because firms made cartel agreements by more sophisticated methods as the cartel regulation became more intense. Accordingly, in the continental law of Korea the approach of the courts in relation to cartel regulation is somewhat different to the United States. However, in terms of a standard for deciding specifically what to …

Passivo Concorrencial: Comprando Um Problema, Ivo T. Gico

Ivo Teixeira Gico Jr.

O presente artigo visa a analisar como a questão concorrencial pode afetar severamente a avaliação de ativos financeiros adquiridos, tendo como pano de fundo o caso da condenação do Sindipedras e outras 18 empresas do setor de mineração por formação de cartel, o primeiro caso de cartel efetivamente punido no Brasil.

This paper aims to examine how the competitive issue may severely affect the valuation of financial assets, having as background the case of the condemnation of Sindipedras and 18 mining industry companies for the cartels practice, the first cartel case effectively punished in Brazil.

Combinations, Concerted Practices And Cartels: Adopting The Concept Of Conspiracy In European Community Competition Law Symposium On European Competition Law , Julian M. Joshua, Sarah Jordan

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

This article charts the progress of, and the vicissitudes faced by, the incorporation into the European Community legal order of the peculiarly common law concept of conspiracy as the vehicle not only for analytical purposes, by characterizing full-blown cartels as "agreements" in the sense of Article 81 of the EC Treaty, but also to resolve the multiplicity of evidential issues presented by complex, pernicious and secretive behavior. The article also shows how the uncovering of deliberate and secretive business delinquency, practiced at the highest levels in some of Europe's most respected corporations and summed up by the negative connotations of …

The Three Types Of Collusion: Fixing Prices, Rivals, And Rules, Robert H. Lande, Howard P. Marvel

All Faculty Scholarship

Collusion can profitably be classified into three distinct types. In our classification, "Type I" collusion is the familiar direct agreement among colluding firms (a cartel) to raise prices or, equivalently, restrict output. Alternatively, firms can collude to disadvantage rivals in ways that causes those rivals to cut output. We term this "Type II" collusion. Its indirect effect is an increase in market prices.

A number of important collusion cases neither direct manipulation of prices or output, nor direct attacks on rivals. Examples include Supreme Court cases such as National Society of Professional Engineers v. US, Bates v. State Bar of …

Optimal Antitrust Penalties And Competitors' Injury, William H. Page

Michigan Law Review

Herbert Hovenkamp's primary target in Antitrust's Protected Classes is the Chicago School's optimal deterrence model of antitrust penalties. Substantive antitrust rules are often overinclusive prohibiting practices even when they are efficient - in order to avoid the costs of error associated with a more case-specific rule. The optimal deterrence model attempts to correct for this overinclusiveness by setting the penalty for antitrust violations at a level just sufficient to deter only inefficient instances of the violation. The task is complicated by, among other things, the myriad effects antitrust offenses can have on economic actors: allocative inefficiencies and efficiencies (the losses …

Hawley: The New Deal And The Monopoly Problem, Arthur D. Austin

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The New Deal and the Monopoly Problem By E. W. Hawley

Antitrust And The Consumer Interest, Kenneth S. Carlston, James M. Treece

Michigan Law Review

Public control of business in the United States has proceeded, in most sectors of the economy, on the assumption that free, open competition in the market should be the primary regulator. It is felt that consumer welfare will be maximized by such an organization of the economy. Courts, governmental agencies, and, to a certain extent, private agencies have performed the role of ensuring that free markets are not displaced by other, less desirable alternatives.

The Antitrust Laws In Foregin Commerce, Robert A. Nitschke

Michigan Law Review

The Sherman Act applies to trade or commerce "with foreign nations." Are there differences in the act's application to foreign trade compared with its application to domestic commerce? The Attorney General's National Committee to Study the Antitrust Laws was constituted at a time when this question was pressing for an answer.

During the 1920's and 1930's, the international cartel movement was in full Hood. American companies participated in some of these international arrangements, often in the belief that they were a necessary condition for world trade and upon the legal premise that restrictions adjunctive to patent and know-how licenses were …