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Full-Text Articles in Law

Understanding Behavioral Antitrust, Avishalom Tor Nov 2013

Understanding Behavioral Antitrust, Avishalom Tor

Avishalom Tor

Behavioral antitrust – the application to antitrust analysis of empirical evidence of robust behavioral deviations from strict rationality – is increasingly popular and hotly debated by legal scholars and the enforcement agencies alike. This Article shows, however, that both proponents and opponents of behavioral antitrust frequently and fundamentally misconstrue its methodology, treating concrete empirical phenomena as if they were broad hypothetical assumptions. Because of this fundamental methodological error, scholars often make three classes of mistakes in behavioral antitrust analyses: First, they fail to appreciate the variability and heterogeneity of behavioral phenomena; second, they disregard the concrete ways in which markets, …


Overcoming Impediments To Information Sharing, Avishalom Tor, Amitai Aviram Nov 2013

Overcoming Impediments To Information Sharing, Avishalom Tor, Amitai Aviram

Avishalom Tor

When deciding whether to share information, firms consider their private welfare. Discrepancies between social and private welfare may lead firms excessively to share information to anti-competitive ends - in facilitating of cartels and other harmful horizontal practices - a problem both antitrust scholarship and case law have paid much attention to. On the other hand, legal scholars have paid far less attention to the opposite type of inefficiency in information sharing among competitors - namely, the problem of sub-optimal information sharing. This phenomenon can generate significant social costs and is of special importance in network industries because the maintenance of …


Unilateral, Anticompetitive Acquisitions Of Dominance Or Monopoly Power, Avishalom Tor Nov 2013

Unilateral, Anticompetitive Acquisitions Of Dominance Or Monopoly Power, Avishalom Tor

Avishalom Tor

The prohibition of certain types of anticompetitive unilateral conduct by firms possessing a substantial degree of market power is a cornerstone of competition law regimes worldwide. Yet notwithstanding the social costs of monopoly modern legal regimes refrain from prohibiting it outright. Instead, competition laws prohibit monopolies or dominant firms from engaging in those types of anticompetitive conduct that amount to monopolizing or an abuse of dominant position. Importantly, anticompetitive conduct can take place both on the road to monopoly and, later on, once substantial market power has been achieved. Legal regimes nevertheless tend either to ignore or pay only limited …


Introduction: Expansion And Contraction In Monopolization Law, Michael S. Gal, Spencer Weber Waller, Avishalom Tor Nov 2013

Introduction: Expansion And Contraction In Monopolization Law, Michael S. Gal, Spencer Weber Waller, Avishalom Tor

Avishalom Tor

This article introduces a special symposium issue of the Antitrust Law Journal based on a conference on monopolization. It argues that monopolization law has been experiencing simultaneous expansion and contraction processes that are not wholly contradictory but at least partly complementary. Specifically, the authors suggest that the contraction of monopolization law in the United States and the EU might serve to facilitate its expansion and increased importance worldwide, providing other antitrust regimes with more focused and effective tools to address the challenges involved in regulating dominant firms. Moreover, monopolization law's increased reach internationally also has made its refinement and rationalization …


Illustrating A Behaviorally Informed Approach To Antitrust Law: The Case Of Predatory Pricing, Avishalom Tor Nov 2013

Illustrating A Behaviorally Informed Approach To Antitrust Law: The Case Of Predatory Pricing, Avishalom Tor

Avishalom Tor

One of the core assumptions of the traditional economic approach to antitrust law is that competitors are perfectly rational, profit-maximizing, decision makers. Sometimes, this assumption serves as a useful simplification of business behavior, providing an effective foundation for antitrust doctrine. At other times, however, assuming strictly rational behavior on the part of competitors is not “approximately right” but, instead, “perfectly wrong.” In these latter cases, the reliance on the perfect rationality assumption can lead scholars to mispredict market behavior and, possibly, advocate erroneous prescriptions for antitrust policy. In contrast, a behaviorally informed approach to antitrust law is based on scientific …


Expansion And Contraction In Monopolization Law, Michal Gal, Spencer Waller Weber, Avishalom Tor Dec 2009

Expansion And Contraction In Monopolization Law, Michal Gal, Spencer Waller Weber, Avishalom Tor

Avishalom Tor

This article introduces a special symposium issue of the Antitrust Law Journal based on a conference on monopolization. It argues that monopolization law has been experiencing simultaneous expansion and contraction processes that are not wholly contradictory but at least partly complementary. Specifically, the authors suggest that the contraction of monopolization law in the United States and the EU might serve to facilitate its expansion and increased importance worldwide, providing other antitrust regimes with more focused and effective tools to address the challenges involved in regulating dominant firms. Moreover, monopolization law's increased reach internationally also has made its refinement and rationalization …