Antitrust Amorphisms
CPI Antitrust Chronicle, November 2019
8 Pages Posted: 9 Dec 2019
Date Written: November 1, 2019
Abstract
Advocates of traditional antitrust are increasingly called upon to the defend the existing framework. In doing so they face a challenge: the traditional framework is actually quite difficult to explain. The problem is not that modern antitrust involves a lot of advanced economics — though that is also true. The problem is that foundational antitrust concepts like "harm to competition" and the protection of "consumer welfare" are shockingly ill-defined. This essay highlights several of the dormant ambiguities in these concepts, and thus the obstacles that antitrust has set for itself by failing ever to fully define its terms.
Keywords: consumer welfare, harm to competition, antitrust standards
JEL Classification: K21, L4
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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