Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons^™

Trust Issues: Will President Barack Obama Reconcile The Tenuous Relationship Between Antitrust Enforcement Agencies?, Kelly Everett

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

Given the importance President Obama has placed on antitrust law, this comment will address the tenuous relationship between the FTC and the DOJ, and the likelihood the Obama Administration will reconcile it. This comment will first explore the development and purpose of antitrust law in the United States. Second, it will discuss why the FTC and DOJ have a contentious and ineffective relationship. Third, it will address the narrowing effect the Obama Administration is likely to have on antitrust enforcement, despite the downturned economy. Finally, this comment will summarize what circumstances created a climate of under-enforcement and uncertainty, and describe …

Market Power In Power Markets: The Filed-Rate Doctrine And Competition In Electricity, Sandeep Vaheesan

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

State and federal initiatives have opened the American electric power industry to competition over the past four decades. Although the process has not occurred uniformly across the country, wholesale electricity markets exist everywhere today. Independent power producers can construct generation facilities and sell their output to utilities and industrial customers through bilateral contracts. In many regions, centralized power markets now facilitate the sale of billions of dollars in electricity annually through auctions. Although market forces have replaced direct price regulation in electricity, antitrust enforcement has not expanded its role commensurately. A lack of competition has been a serious problem in …

Should Competition Policy Promote Happiness?, Maurice E. Stucke

Fordham Law Review

    What, if anything, are the implications of the happiness economics literature on competition policy? This Article first examines whether competition policy should promote (or at least not impede) citizens’ opportunities to increase well–being. It next surveys the happiness literature on five key issues: (i) What constitutes well–being; (ii) How do you measure well–being; (iii) What increases well–being; (iv) Do people want to be happy; and (v) Can and should the government promote total well–being? Although the happiness literature does not provide an analytical framework for analyzing routine antitrust issues, this does not mean that competition officials should discount or ignore …

Merger Settlement And Enforcement Policy For Optimal Deterrence And Maximum Welfare, Steven C. Salop

Fordham Law Review

       Merger enforcement today relies on settlements more than litigation to resolve anticompetitive concerns. The impact of settlement policy on welfare and the proper goals of settlement policy are highly controversial. Some argue that gun–shy agencies settle for too little, while others argue that agencies use their power to delay to extract overreaching settlement terms, even when mergers are not welfare reducing. This Article uses decision theory to throw light on this controversy. The goal of this Article is to formulate and analyze agency merger enforcement and settlement commitment policies in the face of imperfect information, litigation costs, and delay risks …

Josh Wright’S “Chicago School Papers”: An Overview, William H. Page

UF Law Faculty Publications

In what follows, I consider three of FTC Commissioner Josh Wright's “Chicago School Papers.” In these papers, Commissioner Wright considers the past, present, and future role of the Chicago School of antitrust analysis in the shaping of law and policy, offering along the way some interesting insights into what his priorities at the FTC are likely to be. The papers discussed have common themes: the mischaracterization of the “Chicago School,” the scientific advantage of dispensing altogether with “School” labels, and a focus on empirical findings in shaping antitrust analysis.

Welfare Standards In U.S. And E.U. Antitrust Enforcement, Roger D. Blair, D. Daniel Sokol

UF Law Faculty Publications

The potential goals of antitrust are numerous. Goals matter to antitrust. We believe that it is total welfare rather than consumer welfare that should drive antitrust analysis. We use this Article as an opportunity to explore both a comparative analysis of welfare standards across E. U. and US. competition systems and the impact of welfare standards on global antitrust systemwide welfare.

In this Article, we analyze two types of situations in which there would be a different outcome based on the goal implemented. One scenario involves resale price maintenance (RPM). For RPM, we argue that even if there were a …

A Decade Of Registered And Unregistered Design Rights Decisions In The Uk: What Conclusions Can We Draw For The Future Of Both Types Of Rights?, Estelle Derclaye

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

The Granting Clause And Intellectual Property Rights Management In Open-Source Software Licensing, Vikrant N. Vasudeva

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Dissenting State Patent Regimes, Camilla A. Hrdy

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Welfare Standards In U.S. And E.U. Antitrust Enforcement , Roger D. Blair, D. Daniel Sokol

Fordham Law Review

   The potential goals of antitrust are numerous. Goals matter to antitrust. We believe that it is total welfare rather than consumer welfare that should drive antitrust analysis. We use this Article as an opportunity to explore both a comparative analysis of welfare standards across E.U. and U.S. competition systems and the impact of welfare standards on global antitrust systemwide welfare.

   In this Article, we analyze two types of situations in which there would be a different outcome based on the goal implemented. One scenario involves resale price maintenance (RPM). For RPM, we argue that even if there were a different …

Institutional Design, Agency Life Cycle, And The Goals Of Competition Law, David A. Hyman, William E. Kovacic

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Essence Of Antitrust: Protecting Consumers And Small Suppliers From Anticompetitive Conduct, John B. Kirkwood

Fordham Law Review

   The goals of antitrust law continue to be debated because there is no single goal that is unambiguously correct. There is one goal, however, that now commands wider support than any other: protecting consumers and small suppliers from anticompetitive conduct—conduct that creates market power, transfers wealth from consumers or small suppliers, and fails to provide them with compensating benefits. This goal is the predominant objective in the legislative histories, it is broadly supported by the American people, it is easier to administer than a total welfare standard, and it is now espoused by the majority of courts.

   Proponents of total …

Implementing Antitrust’S Welfare Goals, Herbert Hovenkamp

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Antitrust’S Democracy Deficit, Harry First, Spencer Weber Waller

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Model-Based Pricing In Hurricane Insurance: A Case Study For Judicial Reform Of The Mccarran-Freguson Act, Benjamin Holland Able

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The McCarran-Ferguson Act (MFA) exempts various aspects of state insurance operations from federal antitrust enforcement. This exemption is a source of longstanding controversy, due in part to its potentially harmful effect on consumers in product pricing. In hurricane insurance, there is a burgeoning debate concerning insurers' use of predictive computer models rather than shared loss data to set premiums for the industry. By using these models in hurricane-prone states, insurers have increased the price of hurricane insurance dramatically. Where these new prediction methods are used, MFA exemption may facilitate supracompetitive pricing in ways its architects could not have foreseen. This …

Reframing The (False?) Choice Between Purchaser Welfare And Total Welfare, Alan J. Meese

Faculty Publications

This Article critiques the role that the partial equilibrium trade-off paradigm plays in the debate over the definition of “consumer welfare” that courts should employ when developing and applying antitrust doctrine. The Article contends that common reliance on the paradigm distorts the debate between those who would equate “consumer welfare” with “total welfare” and those who equate consumer welfare with “purchaser welfare.” In particular, the model excludes, by fiat, the fact that new efficiencies free up resources that flow to other markets, increasing output and thus the welfare of purchasers in those markets. Moreover, the model also assumes that both …

Toward An Empirical And Theoretical Assessment Of Private Antitrust Enforcement, Joshua P. Davis, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

The dominant view in the antitrust field is that private enforcement cases, and especially class actions, accomplish little or nothing positive but, on the contrary, are counterproductive. Despite strongly worded convictions, that view has been premised on anecdotal, self-serving and insufficiently substantiated claims. Indeed, the authors' 2008 study of 40 private cases appears to constitute the only systematic effort to gather information about a significant number of private antitrust actions. That study generated a great deal of controversy, including questioning of our conclusions by high officials at the Department of Justice and by Professor Daniel Crane at the University of …

A Traditional And Textualist Analysis Of The Goals Of Antitrust: Efficiency, Preventing Theft From Consumers, And Consumer Choice, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article ascertains the overall purpose of the antitrust statutes in two very different ways. First, it performs a traditional analysis of the legislative history of the antitrust laws by analyzing relevant legislative debates and committee reports. Second, it undertakes a textualist or "plain meaning" analysis of the purpose of the antitrust statutes, using Justice Scalia's methodology. It does this by analyzing the meaning of key terms as they were used in contemporary dictionaries, legal treatises, common law cases, and the earliest U.s. antitrust cases, and it does this in light of the history of the relevant times.

Both approaches …

Foreword: Antitrust’S Pursuit Of Purpose, Barak Orbach

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Against Goals, Eleanor M. Fox

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Economics And Politics: Perspectives On The Goals And Future Of Antitrust, Jonathan B. Baker

Fordham Law Review

       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 with politics by describing antitrust’s economic goals as the product of a mid-twentieth century political understanding about the nature of economic regulation that continues to be accepted. To protect that understanding, it explains, antitrust rules should now be implemented using a qualified consumer welfare standard. It identifies contemporary political tensions that threaten to create regulatory gridlock or even to undermine that political understanding …

Reframing The (False?) Choice Between Purchaser Welfare And Total Welfare, Alan J. Meese

Fordham Law Review

       This Article critiques the role that the partial equilibrium trade–off paradigm plays in the debate over the definition of “consumer welfare” that courts should employ when developing and applying antitrust doctrine. The Article contends that common reliance on the paradigm distorts the debate between those who would equate “consumer welfare” with “total welfare” and those who equate consumer welfare with “purchaser welfare.” In particular, the model excludes, by fiat, the fact that new efficiencies free up resources that flow to other markets, increasing output and thus the welfare of purchasers in those markets. Moreover, the model also assumes that both …

How Antitrust Lost Its Goal, Barak Orbach

Fordham Law Review

   During the first seven decades following the enactment of the Sherman Act, competition was the uncontroversial goal of antitrust. The introduction of the consumer welfare standard led to the dissipation of “competition” as the goal of U.S. competition laws. This Essay explores how antitrust lost the goal of competition and argues that this goal should be restored. The Essay reevaluates several influential antitrust propositions. First, while “consumer welfare” was offered as a remedy for reconciling contradictions and inconsistencies in antitrust, the adoption of the consumer welfare standard sparked an enduring controversy, causing confusion and doctrinal uncertainty. In effect, the consumer …

Trusts And The Origins Of Antitrust Legislation, Wayne D. Collins

Fordham Law Review

   Between 1888 and 1890, thirteen states and the federal government enacted antitrust legislation criminalizing combinations among competitors intended to control prices in the marketplace. These laws were a reaction to the increasing formation of horizontal combinations, large and small, throughout the economy in the wake of dramatically changing economic conditions since the Civil War. Through most of this period, combinations struggled to find structures that would enable them to operate effectively. Simple combinations of independent firms, although neither criminal nor tortious, were often undermined because state common law refused to enforce the contractual arrangements that would prevent members from deviating …

A Traditional And Textualist Analysis Of The Goals Of Antitrust: Efficiency, Preventing Theft From Consumers, And Consumer Choice, Robert H. Lande

Fordham Law Review

   This Article ascertains the overall purpose of the antitrust statutes in two very different ways. First, it performs a traditional analysis of the legislative history of the antitrust laws by analyzing relevant legislative debates and committee reports. Second, it undertakes a textualist or “plain meaning” analysis of the purpose of the antitrust statutes, using Justice Scalia’s methodology. It does this by analyzing the meaning of key terms as they were used in contemporary dictionaries, legal treatises, common law cases, and the earliest U.S. antitrust cases, and it does this in light of the history of the relevant times.

   Both approaches …

The Goals Of Antitrust: Welfare Trumps Choice, Joshua D. Wright, Douglas H. Ginsburg

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Who Wants To Watch? A Comment On The New International Paradigm Of Financial Consumer Market Regulation, Toni Williams

Seattle University Law Review

This Article explores the capacity of the G20’s model of financial consumer protection to reconfigure relationships between financial firms and consumers, focusing in particular on the market conduct of financial firms. Although this Article does not focus directly on Adolf A. Berle’s work, it does engage with some of his enduring concerns about economic relations between corporations, regulators, and individuals; the socialcontext of those economic relations; and the role of law and legal regulation in shaping market relations. More specifically, this Article considers new international regulatory principles related to corporate social responsibility— a recurring theme of Berle’s work11—in the somewhat …

Dinner Parties During “Lost Decades”: On The Difficulties Of Rethinking Financial Markets, Fostering Elite Consensus, And Renewing Political Economy, David A. Westbrook

Seattle University Law Review

This Article addresses two groups of problems that ought to be understood in relation to one another. This Article has three movements. In Part II, I discuss conceptual obstacles to forming the new elite consensus that rethinking the role of financial markets requires. To produce policy reform, it is not enough to have new ideas; the ideas must be understood, adopted, and acted upon by people. Policy reform is thus always a function of conversations. In Part III, I discuss some possible ways the elite consensus might be formed. In Part V, the conclusion, I offer a preliminary assessment of …

On The Rise Of Shareholder Primacy, Signs Of Its Fall, And The Return Of Managerialism (In The Closet), Lynn A. Stout

Seattle University Law Review

In their 1932 opus "The Modern Corporation and Public Property," Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means famously documented the evolution of a new economic entity—the public corporation. What made the public corporation “public,” of course, was that it had thousands or even hundreds of thousands of shareholders, none of whom owned more than a small fraction of outstanding shares. As a result, the public firm’s shareholders had little individual incentive to pay close attention to what was going on inside the firm, or even to vote. Dispersed shareholders were rationally apathetic. If they voted at all, they usually voted to approve …

Rebalancing Private Placement Regulation, William K. Sjostrom, Jr.

Seattle University Law Review

Regulating securities offerings entails balancing investor protection and capital formation. Inevitably, this balance gets upset. As financial markets evolve, Congress passes new legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopts new rules, and the courts issue unanticipated opinions. These events upset the balance because they happen in an uncoordinated and haphazard manner and oftentimes produce unintended consequences.The Article proceeds as follows. To set the stage, Part II provides background on the Securities Act and describes the differences between public offerings and private placements. Part III explains why rebalancing private placement regulation may be warranted. Part IV offers proposed statutory language …