Measuring the Antitrust Revolution

Sokol, D. Daniel, Bensley, Sara and Crook, Maia, Measuring the Antitrust Revolution (2020), Antitrust Bulletin, Volume: 65 issue: 4, page(s): 499-514

18 Pages Posted: 30 Jun 2020 Last revised: 17 Nov 2020

See all articles by D. Daniel Sokol

D. Daniel Sokol

USC Gould School of Law; USC Marshall School of Business

Sara Bensley

University of Florida Levin College of Law

Maia Crook

University of Florida

Date Written: June 6, 2020

Abstract

Though antitrust always evolved with the economics of its time, economic analysis was not central to the antitrust enterprise until Continental T.V. Inc. v. GTE Sylvania. In doing so, the Court abandoned the multiple goals of the prior era to embrace a singular economic goal. With a singular goal, antitrust had become revolutionary. How to measure the antitrust revolution has been difficult. In this article, we focus on published caselaw, which provides a broad set of observations that includes government enforcement actions and private antitrust suits. We use the Caselaw Access Project (“CAP”) database and its associated “Historical Trends” tool to track the usage of certain words and phrases in judicial opinions. This article is the first to measure antitrust terms in court cases that combines big data with data visualization techniques to better understand, based on usage of common antitrust terms, the impact economics has had on decided cases.

Keywords: antitrust, competition law, data visualization, antitrust economics

JEL Classification: l40, k21

Suggested Citation

Sokol, D. Daniel and Bensley, Sara and Crook, Maia, Measuring the Antitrust Revolution (June 6, 2020). Sokol, D. Daniel, Bensley, Sara and Crook, Maia, Measuring the Antitrust Revolution (2020), Antitrust Bulletin, Volume: 65 issue: 4, page(s): 499-514, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3620587 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3620587

D. Daniel Sokol (Contact Author)

USC Gould School of Law ( email )

699 Exposition Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90089
United States

USC Marshall School of Business ( email )

701 Exposition Blvd
Los Angeles, CA California 90089
United States

Sara Bensley

University of Florida Levin College of Law ( email )

P.O. Box 117625
Gainesville, FL 32611-7625
United States

Maia Crook

University of Florida ( email )

FL
United States

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
272
Abstract Views
1,426
Rank
219,738
PlumX Metrics