Law Commons^™

Section 2 Enforcement And The Great Recession: Why Less (Enforcement) Might Mean More (Gdp), Alan J. Meese

Faculty Publications

The Great Recession has provoked calls for more vigorous regulation in all sectors, including antitrust enforcement. After President Obama took office, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice abandoned the Bush Administration’s standard of liability under section 2 of the Sherman Act, which forbids unlawful monopolization, as insufficiently interventionist. Based on the premise that similarly lax antitrust enforcement caused and deepened the Great Depression, the Obama Administration outlined a more intrusive and consumer-focused approach to section 2 enforcement as part of a larger national strategy to combat the “extreme” economic crisis the nation was then facing.

This Essay draws …

Were Standard Oil's Railroad Rebates And Drawbacks Cost Justified?, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

In this essay, written for a symposium on the centennial anniversary of the Supreme Court's Standard Oil decision, I reexamine the costjustification question. In the first part, I explain why the cost-justification question is central to the entire case and its acquired and evolving historical meaning. In the second part, I review the evidence of claimed efficiencies passed on to the railroads. I conclude that there is evidence that Standard Oil passed along significant cost savings to the railroads and that these savings could have justified a portion of the rebates and drawbacks. However, I conclude that there is little …

Parallel Exclusion, C. Scott Hemphill, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars and courts have long debated whether and when "parallel pricing" – adoption of the same price by every firm in a market – should be considered a violation of antitrust law. But there has been a comparative neglect of the importance of "parallel exclusion" – conduct, engaged in by multiple firms, that blocks or slows would-be market entrants. Parallel exclusion merits greater attention, for it can be far more harmful than parallel price elevation. Setting a high price leaves the field open for new entrants and may even attract them. In contrast, parallel action that excludes new entrants both …