Imagine the following — during the course of a decade or so, scholars in a highly developed legal specialty start to question the fundamental principles upon which that discipline rests. Say, for example, that tort professors concluded that the “reasonable person” should no longer be used as a benchmark in negligence cases because the fictional construct does not exist — people are too often unreasonable. Although the tort world seems to be safe from such a shakeup, something very like this is happening in antitrust law.
Antitrust rests securely on apparently unshakeable economic theories that are now familiar to even beginners in the field. What could be more solid than the economic presumption that markets are populated by rational buyers and sellers each striving to optimize its self-interest? It is critically important that this fundamental model be correct because so much decision-making in the antitrust world is based upon prediction. Will a proposed merger produce overall positive or negative economic effects for consumers? Will price coordination among competing sellers always produce higher prices for consumers? Will forcing a wholesaler to resell at or above a price dictated by the manufacturer produce desirable or undesirable results? Courts and practitioners often resolve such questions by deploying economic models to predict economic consequences, but an emerging group of legal and economic experts thinks that, in some cases, the mainstream economic model is flawed. Before exploring the flaws and the fixes, some history is in order.
This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.
To view this content, please continue to their sites.
Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law are third party online distributors of the broad collection of current and archived versions of ALM's legal news publications. LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law customers are able to access and use ALM's content, including content from the National Law Journal, The American Lawyer, Legaltech News, The New York Law Journal, and Corporate Counsel, as well as other sources of legal information.
For questions call 1-877-256-2472 or contact us at [email protected]
