In the April issue of The Antitrust Source, David Scheffman and Joseph Simons identify what they view as a serious flaw in the standard analysis for assessing likely unilateral effects from mergers involving differentiated consumer products. Drawing on marketing literature and psychology, they...

A raft of articles offered contrasting views on analytic tools for assessing unilateral effects from differentiated products mergers. We revisit this debate to clarify the issues and place them in context. We consider the choice among analytic tools at three stages of a merger assessment -...

Scholarship on competition policy has begun to explore the implications of learning from behavioral research and to challenge the assumption of profit maximization at the heart of neoclassical economic theory of the firm. This scholarship is briefly reviewed, focusing on merger control....

We propose a simple method for predicting price effects from mergers between branded retail chains competing in many local markets. When past mergers created markets with the same number of brands but different numbers of brand owners, price data at a single point in time exhibit between-market...

The rule of reason is the standard for testing whether a restraint of trade violates the Sherman Act. The thesis of this article is that the only issue under the rule of reason is the impact of a restraint on the competitive process; the Sherman Act does not employ a welfare standard. This...

Licensing technology essential to a standard can present a hold-up problem. After designing new products incorporating a standard, a manufacturer could be confronted by an innovator asserting patent rights to essential technology. A damages remedy provided by antitrust or some other body of law...

The New Brandeis School renews debate on two fundamental antitrust policy questions: 1) what source of wisdom or set of values should inform antitrust rules; and 2) what criterion should govern antitrust case adjudication. In our view, the Chicago School's answer to the first question was right;...

Professor Louis Kaplow capped off his series on the relevant market with a final essay in this the Antitrust Law Journal. His premise remains that relevant market is used only to help assess a firm's market power based on its market share. He claims: (1) “there exists no valid way to make...

The Obama Administration's Council of Economic Advisers expressed concern that competition was threatened by increasing industry concentration. Academics, commentators, and journalists have joined the chorus. But none demonstrated increasing concentration of meaningful markets, as are used in...

This essay examines the meaning of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, which prohibits monopolization, under the textualist guidance of Reading Law by the late Justice Scalia and Bryan Garner. This essay compiles the background material early decisions could have drawn upon and finds that to...