Description:
The past decade has been a time of great upheaval for transatlantic competition policy. This is evident in the United States (at the federal and state levels), the European Union, and the United Kingdom. With the reinvigoration of antitrust policy has come a reinvigoration of antitrust economics, which has been increasingly prominent in the reasoning of regulators and courts. This volume chronicles key flashpoints in this process, from an economics point of view. It provides 18 contributions from leading antitrust economists involved in recent groundbreaking merger, monopolization, and anticompetitive-agreement cases on both sides of the Atlantic. In all instances, the basic economic features of these important cases should be accessible to all readers who have an interest in antitrust.
Brief description: John Kwoka is the Neal F. Finnegan Distinguished Professor of Economics at Northeastern University. He recently served as Chief Economic Advisor to the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission. He previously served at the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, the Federal Communications Commission, and once before at the FTC. Kwoka's recent research has focused on merger and remedies policy and has resulted in two books: Mergers, Merger Control, and Remedies and Controlling Mergers and Market Power.
Review Quotes:
"This book is a compendium of essays on U.S. and European antitrust cases by a stellar cast of competition scholars. The focus is on the important
economic issues raised by recent enforcement actions. The essays cover a wide range of frontier topics in antitrust, including vertical mergers,
acquisitions that eliminate potential competitors, harm to innovation, monopsony, no-poaching agreements, and competition policy for two-sided
platforms. The essays are balanced and insightful. Taken together they are essential reading for anyone interested in the current state of international
antitrust enforcement." Richard Gilbert - Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley
"Antitrust Economics at a Time of Upheaval is a refreshing comparative perspective on the role of economics in ways that are largely pro-enforcement and that consider the impact of new technologies. It is an excellent presentation of the view that antitrust need not abandon economics
in order to fight anticompetitive practices effectively; to the contrary, economics provides the basic tools for supporting that fight. For example,
efficiencies must be proven, but they should be taken seriously. The same is true of predatory pricing. As the editors observe, new theories that either cabin or reject older Chicago-driven doctrine can be both economically rational and empirically robust.
Herbert Hovenkamp - James G. Dinan University Professor, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School