The Effect of Antitrust Policy on Consumer Welfare: What Crandall and Winston Overlook

Werden, Gregory J.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.384100

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The Effect of Antitrust Policy on Consumer Welfare: What Crandall and Winston Overlook

U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division Discussion Paper No. EAG 03-2

9 Pages Posted: 1 Apr 2003

See all articles by Gregory J. Werden

Gregory J. Werden

Independent; George Mason University - Mercatus Center

Date Written: January 2003

Abstract

Robert Crandall and Clifford Winston set out to review and enlarge the body of scholarly evidence on the effect of antitrust policy on consumer prices. They ignore, however, the great weight of evidence supporting the two core elements of antitrust policy - criminal prosecution of cartel activity and challenging anticompetitive horizontal mergers. And their original empirical analysis relating to merger enforcement suffers from such serious methodological flaws that it sheds no new light on the issues.

JEL Classification: L40

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Werden, Gregory J., The Effect of Antitrust Policy on Consumer Welfare: What Crandall and Winston Overlook (January 2003). U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division Discussion Paper No. EAG 03-2, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=384100 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.384100