Law Commons^™

Market Power Without A Large Market Share: The Role Of Imperfect Information And Other “Consumer Protection” Market Failures, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

There are two very different sources of market power in antitrust cases. The first is traditional market share-based market power. Market power in antitrust cases also can come from deception, significantly imperfect or asymmetric information, or other types of market failures that usually are associated with consumer protection violations.

When these “consumer protection” market failures are present in antitrust cases, market power can arise even if no firm has a market share large enough for a finding of traditional market share based market power. However, instead of traditional end-use consumers being harmed, the direct victims are businesses.

The “consumer protection” …

Chicago Takes It On The Chin: Imperfect Information Could Play A Crucial Role In The Post-Kodak World, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

This article briefly describes the revolutionary potential of the Supreme Court's Kodak decision. It discusses the dramatic changes in antitrust that would occur if the field took concepts such as imperfect information, lock-in effects, strategic behavior, and other post-Chicago ideas seriously.

Among the effects of this decision could be:

(1) Imperfect information could substitute for traditional market share-based market power and reveal that a market that structurally appeared competitive in fact was behaving anticompetitively. Market share-based safe harbors are more likely to be inappropriate.

(2) This imperfect information-based market power also can lead to relatively direct harm to consumers by …