Restraints of trade by durable good producers

Whether they face competition or not, durable good producers may have an incentive to impose vertical restraints on their customers in order to protect quasi-rents in the aftermarkets for maintenance and repair. In this paper, we show that these vertical restraints have little to do with the usual antitrust concerns regarding tying arrangements. Nonetheless, imposing such restraints involves antitrust risks. We examine these risks and the associated antitrust policy questions in light of the Supreme Court's recent Kodak decision. We also offer some suggestions for the appropriate antitrust policy.     

The antitrust implications of electronic business-to-business marketplaces

Electronic marketplaces (e-marketplaces) allow networks of buyers and sellers to conduct business online and to exchange information more efficiently using Internet technology. Despite the benefits that e-marketplaces potentially afford firms, concerns have been raised that these markets may damage competition and potentially violate antitrust laws. This study considers the antitrust legislation related to e-marketplaces and examines the possible antitrust concerns that they raise. Potentially anticompetitive features of e-marketplaces are examined and guidance for firm conduct when creating or participating in an e-marketplace is offered.     

Correlation,causality, and all that jazz: The inherent shortcomings of price tests for antitrust market delineation

A substantial economics literature has developed in which price data have been relied upon to delineate antitrust markets by empirically implementing definitions offered by classical economists. The forces driving these price tests are not the same as those that give rise to market power, and therefore these price tests are likely to reach erroneous conclusions if used to delineate antitrust relevant markets. The price tests should be used with great caution, if at all.     

The FTC in the 1980s

This paper reviews the antitrust activities of Federal Trade Commission during the 1980s with special emphasis on the role of economics and economists. We contrast the FTC during the 1980s to its record in the 1970s and conclude that the agency was more active during the 1980s than is popularly believed. Perhaps more significant than changes in the level of enforcement activity was the agency's move to a more economics-oriented approach to antitrust enforcement and an increased role for Commission economists. The paper also comments on what FTC economists learned about American industry during the 1980s.     

美国现行反垄断法对软件产业的适用性探析--以搭售和掠夺性定价为例

本文对软件产业的搭售与掠夺性定价行为进行了法律和经济分析。在美国现行的反垄断法体系中，这是属于典型的滥用市场势力的两种行为。但在软件产业却不能凭借传统标准简单地把这两种行为归结为垄断行为，而应从产业本身的特点和竞争环境出发谨慎对待。如一味运用美国现行的反垄断法惩罚软件产业正当的竞争行为，只会从更大程度上抑制竞争，损害消费者福利。在网络经济条件下，反垄断法应该顺应经济和技术的     

Towards a typology of collusive industrial networks: Dark and shadow networks

The prevailing understanding of collusive B2B networks is primarily based on the theories of industrial economists and organizational criminologists. ‘Successful’ collusive industrial networks (such as price-fixing cartels) have been seen to endure due to formal managerial structures of coordination and control. In this paper, we seek to transcend and challenge the understanding of these illegal forms of co-opetition by drawing on evidence from an in-depth examination of four price-fixing cartels that were facilitated chiefly by marketers. Our contribution introduces the notion of ‘shadow networks’ (networks where although attempts are made to ensure secrecy, multilateral modes of network structure dominate akin to ‘normal’ managerial endeavours such as joint ventures) and ‘dark networks’ (networks which appear more opaque and secretive through the adoption of bilateral modes of network structure and limited bureaucracy) to illustrate the types of collusive network forms that may exist. In addition, this allows us to build a deeper understanding of collusive network forms and related inter-firm interaction for an industrial marketing audience. We provide implications for marketing practice, theory, and policy. Specifically, we outline how organizations and the marketing function can perform self-administered antitrust audits in order to help avoid breaches of antitrust. Further, we consider the importance of the two forms of collusive inter-firm networks uncovered where marketers have attempted to render these secret from antitrust agencies, introducing a relatively new line of inquiry to the industrial marketing literature.     

论市场结构范式的标准与评价体系

出于反对重商主义和垄断的需要,自由经济理论建立了完全竞争范式,并把完全竞争奉为经济学的金科玉律。自从20世纪40年代,熊彼特深刻地批判了完全竞争的缺陷以后,经济理论研究实际陷入了市场结构范式缺失的境地。50年代,舒马赫重谈完全竞争的老调,提出了“小的是美好的”理论。近期有学者根据SCP标准,提出了寡头垄断范式。也有学者希望通过对垄断企业的科学规制,建立完全垄断的市场结构范式。毫无疑问,作为经济学的基础理论,市场结构范式不可或缺。因此,建立一个合理的市场结构范式评价体系刻不容缓。     

The Dubious Antitrust Argument for Breaking Up the Internet Giants

Recent calls for using the antitrust laws to break up the large Internet giants are misplaced for a number of reasons. First, similar efforts against oil, tobacco, motion-picture, and telecommunications monopolies have not proved to be beneficial to economic welfare. Second, the failure to break up Microsoft using Section 2 has not proved to be a mistake: competition in operating systems and Internet browsers has flourished recently. Finally, a Section 2 case against Amazon, Facebook, or Google could not succeed if it focused on the digital advertising market. Even in a case based on market power on the other side of their platforms, a structural remedy—a break-up—would not improve economic welfare in the long run.

     

Vertical restraints in the Australian Trade Practices Act

Vertical restraints are singled out for detailed legislative treatment in the AustralianTrade Practices Act. Resale price maintenance and third-line forcing (tying another firm's products) are illegal per se while price discrimination and non-price vertical restraints (apart from third-line forcing) are subject to a competition test. Most vertical restraints may be either authorised by the Trade Practices Commission or given statutory exemption from the Act under a notification procedure unique to vertical restraints. The ability to seek an authorisation or to notify the Commission about a vertical practice has meant that the economic issues in this area have been dealt with mainly in administrative processes outside the courts. While issues of economic efficiency have been important, the main objective of the Commission has been to benefit consumers by promoting competition as a process. This paper briefly overviews what is probably the most complex area of antitrust in Australia yet, which has received negligible academic comment.     

How do Brands’ “Own Generics” Affect Pharmaceutical Prices?

This paper examines the price effects of generic drugs that are produced by brand-name drug firms and that are labeled, priced, and marketed to compete against independent generics. The strategy of introducing such “pseudo-generics” – also known as “authorized generics” – has raised some antitrust concerns. One defense of this strategy has been that the additional competition created by pseudo-generics should lead to lower prices. This paper develops a simple model to show that pseudo-generics can be expected to have exactly the opposite effect. It then examines empirical evidence on this point from the Canadian pharmaceutical market, showing that there appears to be a positive relationship between drug prices and the share of generic sales made by the brand’s own pseudo-generic.     

Introduction to the RIO Special Issue on Antitrust and the Platform Economy

The emergence of large technology platforms has raised fundamental questions about antitrust enforcement. These questions, which are the subject of this RIO special issue, are now challenging scholars and policy makers. The topics covered here include the role of economics and the consumer welfare standard in antitrust; lessons from historic antitrust cases; the role of big data in antitrust analysis; antitrust analysis of multi-sided markets; and the interplay between competition and privacy regulation.

     

Patterns of abnormal returns and the competitive effects of horizontal mergers

This paper examines the abnormal stock returns of rivals of firms undertaking horizontal mergers that were challenged by the FTC over the period 1981–1987. At the time of merger announcements, the rivals earn positive abnormal return on average; at the time of the antitrust complaints, the rivals earn normal returns. Past studies have argued that this specific pattern of abnormal returns necessarily indicates that mergers could not have reduced competition. This paper finds that this pattern of abnormal returns is a result of the different effects of antitrust complaints on smaller and larger rivals. The evidence suggests that the mergers may have created efficiencies, but the pattern of abnormal returns is not inconsistent with mergers that may also have resulted in higher product prices.     

Economics at the Antitrust Division 2016–2017: Healthcare,Nuclear Waste,and Agriculture

This year the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice litigated an unprecedented number of cases. Two mergers, Anthem with Cigna and Aetna with Humana, threatened to dramatically alter the face of commercial health insurance. The Anthem case raised questions of how to evaluate a claim that competition costs billions annually in potential medical cost savings. The Aetna case raised questions of how commercial insurers compete against the public programs—specifically Medicare. The Division also litigated numerous other civil matters including a proposed merger of nuclear waste disposal facilities. In that case, economists had to explore the scope and bounds of competition within a variety of regulatory regimes. And, in a merger of two new technologies that improve the efficiency of planting seeds, the emerging nature of the market led to interesting variations in the analysis. This overview of the economic issues in these particular cases is intended to provide insights into the challenges of enforcing antitrust law and the way in which economic analysis in particular is used to address those challenges.     

Cartel birth and death dynamics: Empirical evidence

This paper examines how a gradual tightening of antitrust enforcement impacts cartels’ births and deaths. To avoid the inherent sample selection bias in prosecuted cartel studies, we use a unique dataset of Swedish legal cartels registered between 1946 and 1993. We compare estimates from a count model (considering only registered cartels) and a Hidden Markov Model (allowing for potentially unregistered cartels) to identify observed and hidden cartel dynamics. The count model suggests that strengthening antitrust enforcement has a deterrent effect, but the Hidden Markov Model suggests otherwise. Despite stricter competition laws and a credible threat of cartel prohibition, cartels continue to form, but do so undercover. Additionally, our results suggest that the strengthening of competition law has little impact on destabilizing existing cartels.     

Potential foreign competition in US manufacturing

Trade barriers are falling and firms are competing in increasingly open international markets. The data reveal considerable heterogeneity across industries in the intertemporal path of import-shares. Against this backdrop, we focus on an issue that is increasingly important for competition policy analysis: ‘potential’ foreign competition. Inadequate attention to this aspect could result in a biased picture of total competition, leading to misguided antitrust decisions. Drawing on the conceptual framework outlined by Landes and Posner [Harvard Law Review, 94 (1981) 937], we measure potential foreign competition by the intertemporal response of industry import-share to industry-specific and aggregate economic factors, and our estimates indicate wide variation across industries in this dimension. A particularly striking finding is that highly concentrated industries, which are more likely to be subject to antitrust scrutiny, have a greater degree of potential foreign competition than industries with low concentration, even though the extent of actual foreign competition is similar across these groups of industries.     

Commitment to Competition: An Assessment of Antitrust Agency Budgets since 1970

In these remarks to the Industrial Organization Society, I discuss the adequacy of antitrust enforcement resources in the U.S. Relevant resources are measured by the competition budgets of the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission. Since 1970 these have been influenced by the overall economy, its changing structure, and politics, but they have not kept up with the pace of mergers or other measures of the need for antitrust. Thus at present, the resources devoted to antitrust fall well short of what is required for continued vigilance over our growing and changing economy.     

Recent Developments at DG Competition: 2013–2014

The Directorate General for Competition at the European Commission enforces competition law in the areas of antitrust, merger control, and state aids. In 2013–2014 important antitrust decisions (Samsung and Motorola) were in the area of standard essential patents. In merger control the European Commission carried out an ex-post evaluation of past mergers in the INEOS/Solvay case in order to obtain valuable insights for the merger under review. In state aid, as a part of the State Aid Modernisation programme, guidelines were prepared to help EU member states to design and carry out ex post assessments of state aid schemes.     

The Australian merger guidelines: A comparison with the U.S. merger guidelines

Modern Australian antitrust had not begun when the first U.S. merger guidelines appeared in 1968. Even now, twenty five years later, no similarly detailed, formal administrative guidelines have been developed in Australia. This paper reviews the way in which the AustralianTrade Practices Act 1974 handles mergers and market definition, and considers how the Courts and the Trade Practices Commission, Australia's sole antitrust enforcement agency, have handled market definition and evaluated mergers. The key role played by the Trade Practices Tribunal, a quasi-judicial body, in influencing the Australian approach to mergers and market definition is highlighted. Contrasts are made with the 1992 American guidelines, and reasons for the different approaches are suggested.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">GTE Sylvania</Emphasis> and Interbrand Competition as the Primary Concern of Antitrust Law

Footnote 19 of the landmark U.S. antitrust decision in Continental T.V. v. GTE Sylvania, Inc. 433 U.S. 36 (1977) declares that “Interbrand competition … is the primary concern of antitrust law.” We trace the antecedents and influence of this declaration, argue that it is inappropriate, and conclude that it should be abandoned.