Law Commons^™

Looking At The Monopsony In The Mirror, Maurice E. Stucke

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

Although still a distant second to monopoly, buyer power and monopsony are hot topics in the antitrust community. Despite the increasing interest in monopsony and buyer power, relatively few cases have actually been brought. Given the relatively few antitrust cases, the legal standards for monopsony claims are less developed than for monopoly claims. In recent years, courts, competition agencies, and scholars in addressing monopsony begin with a simple premise: monopsony is the mirror image of monopoly. But as this Article contends, courts and agencies should be careful when importing monopolization standards for monopsony cases. What works for monopolization claims may …

The Implications Of Behavioral Antitrust, Maurice E. Stucke

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

Behavioral economics is now mainstream. It is also timely. The financial crisis raised important issues of market failure, weak regulation, moral hazard, and our lack of understanding about how many markets actually operate.

As behavioral economics (with its more realistic assumptions of human behavior) goes mainstream in academia and the business world, one expects lawyers and economists to bring the current economic thinking to the competition agencies. How should the competition agencies respond?

This paper examines how competition authorities can consider the implications of behavioral economics on four levels: first as a gap filler, i.e., to help explain “real world” …

Reconsidering Competition, Maurice E. Stucke

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

In light of the financial crisis and the empirical findings from behavioral economics, policymakers should reconsider the fundamental question: what is competition? Only in understanding competition can one understand what competition can or cannot achieve under certain circumstances.

This Article reexamines one premise of competition, namely the extent to which firms, consumers, and the government are rational and act with perfect willpower. In varying this assumption, this Article maps four scenarios of competition.

Competition authorities should revisit their conception of competition, including the underlying assumptions, to better understand the competitive dynamics in different industries. In engaging in this review, competition …

Reconsidering Antitrust's Goals, Maurice E. Stucke

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

Antitrust policy today is an anomaly. On the one hand, antitrust is thriving internationally. On the other hand, antitrust’s influence has diminished domestically. Over the past thirty years, there have been fewer antitrust investigations and private actions. Today the Supreme Court complains about antitrust suits, and places greater faith in the antitrust function being subsumed in a regulatory framework. So what happened to the antitrust movement in the United States?

Two import factors contributed to antitrust policy’s domestic decline. The first is salience, especially the salience of the U.S. antitrust goals. In the past thirty years, enforcers and courts abandoned …

Behavioral Antitrust, Maurice E. Stucke, Amanda P. Reeves

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

Competition policy is entering a new age. Interest in competition laws has increased world-wide, and the United States no longer holds a monopoly on antitrust policy. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the question for competition authorities is whether and to what extent does bounded rationality, self-interest and willpower matter.

This article explores how the behavioral economics literature will advance competition policy. With increasing interest in the United States and abroad in the implications of behavioral economics for competition policy, this Article first provides an overview of behavioral economics. It next discusses how the assumption of rational, self-interested profit-maximizers …