Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Economic Theory Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Antitrust and Trade Regulation

PDF

All Faculty Scholarship

Chicago School

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Economic Theory

Antitrust Error Costs, Herbert J. Hovenkamp Jan 2022

Antitrust Error Costs, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

The idea that consideration of error costs should inform judgments about actions with uncertain consequences is well established. When we act on imperfect information, we consider not only the probability of an event, but also the expected costs of making an error. In 1984 Frank Easterbrook used this idea to rationalize an anti-enforcement bias in antitrust, reasoning that markets are likely to correct monopoly in a relatively short time while judicial errors are likely to persist. As a result, false positives (recognizing a problem when there is none) are more costly than false negatives. While the problem of error cost …


Addressing The Divisions In Antitrust Policy, Herbert J. Hovenkamp Nov 2021

Addressing The Divisions In Antitrust Policy, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This is the text of an interview conducted in writing by Professor A. Douglas Melamed, Stanford Law School.