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Full-Text Articles in Law
On The Misuse Of Regressions Of Price On The Hhi In Merger Review, Jonathan Baker
On The Misuse Of Regressions Of Price On The Hhi In Merger Review, Jonathan Baker
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
The article explains why regressions of price on HHI should not be used in merger review. Both price and HHI are equilibrium outcomes determined by demand, supply, and the factors that drive them. Thus, a regression of price on the HHI does not recover a causal effect that could inform the likely competitive effects of a merger. Nonetheless, economic theory is consistent with the legal presumption that a merger is likely to have adverse competitive effects if it occurs in a concentrated market and makes that market more concentrated.
Accommodating Competition: Harmonizing National Economic Commitments, Jonathan Baker
Accommodating Competition: Harmonizing National Economic Commitments, Jonathan Baker
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
This article shows how the norm supporting governmental action to protect and foster competitive markets was harmonized with economic rights to contract and property during the 19th century, and with the development of the social safety net during the 20th century. It explains why the Constitution, as understood today, does not check the erosion of the entrenched but threatened national commitment to assuring competitive markets.
Unlocking Antitrust Enforcement, Jonathan Baker
Unlocking Antitrust Enforcement, Jonathan Baker
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
No abstract provided.
Overlapping Financial Investor Ownership, Market Power, And Antitrust Enforcement: My Qualified Agreement With Professor Elhauge, Jonathan Baker
Overlapping Financial Investor Ownership, Market Power, And Antitrust Enforcement: My Qualified Agreement With Professor Elhauge, Jonathan Baker
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
As is well known among financial economists but not previously recognized within the antitrust community, large and diversified institutional investors such as BlackRock, Fidelity, State Street, and Vanguard collectively own roughly two-thirds of the shares of publicly traded U.S. firms overall, up from about one-third in 1980. Recent economic research involving airlines and banking raises the possibility that overlapping ownership of horizontal rivals by diversified financial institutions facilitates anticompetitive conduct throughout the economy, and that the problem has been growing for decades, unnoticed until now. This response to an article by Professor Einer Elhauge, explains why it may be more …
Antitrust, Competition Policy, An Inequality, Jonathan Baker, Steven Salop
Antitrust, Competition Policy, An Inequality, Jonathan Baker, Steven Salop
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
Economic inequality recently has entered the political discourse in a highly visible way. This political impact is not a surprise. As the U.S. economy has begun to recover from the Great Recession since mid-2009, economic growth has effectively been appropriated by those already well off, leaving the median household less well off. The serious economic, political and moral issues raised by inequality can be addressed through a panoply of public policies including competition policy, the focus of this article. The article describes the channels through which market power contributes to inequality, and sets forth a range of possible antitrust policy …
Exclusion As A Core Competition Concern, Jonathan Baker
Exclusion As A Core Competition Concern, Jonathan Baker
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
A contemporary consensus in antitrust discourse inappropriately places exclusionary conduct at the periphery of competition policy, while putting collusion at the core. Contrary to that common view, exclusion is as important as collusion as a matter of precedent, the structure of doctrinal rules, economics, and sound competition policy. Courts treat exclusionary violations as serious competitive problems. An emerging doctrinal rule for truncated condemnation of “plain” exclusionary conduct (practices foreclosing rivals that lack a plausible efficiency justification) parallels the evolving judicial approach toward “naked” collusion. Exclusion and collusion can be understood within a common economic framework that emphasizes the close relationship …
Economics And Politics: Perspectives On The Goals And Future Of Antitrust, Jonathan Baker
Economics And Politics: Perspectives On The Goals And Future Of Antitrust, Jonathan Baker
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
This article examines the roles of economics and politics in U.S. antitrust from several perspectives. It explains why the modern debate over the economic welfare standard that enforcers and courts should pursue is unsatisfying. It connects economics and politics by describing antitrust’s economic goals as the product of a mid-20th century political understanding about the nature of economic regulation that has continued in force to this day. To protect that understanding, it explains, antitrust rules should now be implemented using a qualified consumer welfare standard. The article also identifies contemporary political tensions that threaten to create regulatory gridlock, or even …
Preserving A Political Bargain: The Political Economy Of The Non-Interventionist Challenge To Monopolization Enforcement, Jonathan Baker
Preserving A Political Bargain: The Political Economy Of The Non-Interventionist Challenge To Monopolization Enforcement, Jonathan Baker
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
The antitrust rules governing exclusionary conduct by dominant firms are among the most controversial in U.S. competition policy. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, they were debated in three arenas, involving legal policy, economic policy, and politics. In each arena, the dispute mainly arose as criticism of traditional standards by advocates of less intervention. Viewed through a political economy lens, the controversy can be understood as a potential challenge to an informal political bargain reached during the 1940s by which competition was adopted as national economic policy in preference to regulation or laissez-faire. From this perspective, and applying …
International Disparities Panel, Sean Flynn
International Disparities Panel, Sean Flynn
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
No abstract provided.
Beyond Schumpeter Vs. Arrow: How Antitrust Fosters Innovation, Jonathan Baker
Beyond Schumpeter Vs. Arrow: How Antitrust Fosters Innovation, Jonathan Baker
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
The relationship between competition and innovation is the subject of a familiar controversy in economics, between the Schumpeterian view that monopolies favor innovation and the opposite view, often associated with Kenneth Arrow, that competition favors innovation. Taking their cue from this debate, some commentators reserve judgment as to whether antitrust enforcement is good for innovation. Such misgivings are unnecessary. The modern economic learning about the connection between competition and innovation helps clarify the types of firm conduct and industry settings where antitrust interventions are most likely to foster innovation. Measured against this standard, contemporary competition policy holds up well. Today's …
Market Definition: An Analytical Overview, Jonathan Baker
Market Definition: An Analytical Overview, Jonathan Baker
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
This essay surveys important issues in antitrust market definition. It identifies settings in which market definition is useful, and evaluates methods of defining markets. It considers whether markets should be defined with respect to demand substitution only or whether supply substitution also should count. It addresses practical issues in defining markets, including the probative value of various types of evidence, how much buyer substitution is too much, application of the market definition algorithm of the Horizontal Merger Guidelines, the Cellophane fallacy, and the advantages and disadvantages of defining submarkets. It also evaluates several controversial approaches to market definition, including price …
Introduction To Symposium On Integrating New Economic Learning With Antitrust Doctrine, Jonathan Baker
Introduction To Symposium On Integrating New Economic Learning With Antitrust Doctrine, Jonathan Baker
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
No abstract provided.
Competitive Price Discrimination: The Exercise Of Market Power Without Anticompetitive Effects (Comment On Klein And Wiley), Jonathan Baker
Competitive Price Discrimination: The Exercise Of Market Power Without Anticompetitive Effects (Comment On Klein And Wiley), Jonathan Baker
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
A firm that discriminates in prices faces a downward sloping demand curve, and thus could potentially raise price by reducing output. For this reason, evidence of price discrimination is relevant to assessing the possibility of market power, as antitrust law has long recognized. But price discrimination can be beneficial as well as harmful, and can reasonably be termed competitive if entry is easy. Hence a demonstration that entry is easy rebuts the inference of anticompetitive effect when price discrimination is the basis for proof of market power, breaking the link between market power and anticompetitive effect. Klein and Wiley's proposal …
Unilateral Competitive Effects Theories In Merger Analysis, Jonathan Baker
Unilateral Competitive Effects Theories In Merger Analysis, Jonathan Baker
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
No abstract provided.
The Problem With Baker Hughes And Syufy: On The Role Of Entry In Merger Analysis, Jonathan Baker
The Problem With Baker Hughes And Syufy: On The Role Of Entry In Merger Analysis, Jonathan Baker
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
No abstract provided.
The Factional Foundations Of Competition Policy In America 1888-1992, James May
The Factional Foundations Of Competition Policy In America 1888-1992, James May
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
No abstract provided.
Two Sherman Act Section 1 Dilemmas: Parallel Pricing, The Oligopoly Problem, And Contemporary Economic Theory, Jonathan Baker
Two Sherman Act Section 1 Dilemmas: Parallel Pricing, The Oligopoly Problem, And Contemporary Economic Theory, Jonathan Baker
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
No abstract provided.