In October 1996 the Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) pled guilty to criminal pricefixing with respect to sales of lysine and agreed to pay a $70 million fine. Earlier, in August 1996 two Japanese producers and a Korean producer of lysine had agreed to plead guilty to criminal price fixing...

The early 1980s were an important time of transition for antitrust policy for the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. I had the privilege to be selected to serve as the first quot;Chief Economistquot; for the newly installed Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust, William F....

For the wide range of antitrust cases involving allegations of monopoly or monopolization (or variations on that theme), the presence of market power is a necessary prerequisite for finding liability. In turn, the definition or delineation of a relevant market is essential for measuring a...

Despite two decades of extensive deregulation, banks in the United States remain among the most heavily regulated entities in the U.S. economy. Partly, banks remain a prominent target for American populism and its political manifestations; but also important is the general recognitionthat one...

We study the effects of structural changes in banking markets on the supply of credit to small businesses. Specifically, we examine whether bank mergers and acquisitions (Mamp;As) and entry have quot;externalquot; effects on small business loans by other banks in the same local markets. The...

This paper examines two proposed mergers of the 1990s: the Staples proposal to mergewith Office Depot, and the Union Pacific railroad's proposal to merge with the Southern Pacific. Though the two mergers appeared to be quite different on the surface, closer analysis indicates thatthey were...

The Clinton administration did bring a new activism to antitrust. There were cases brought that probably would not have been initiated during the previous regimes. But the elements of continuity were strong as well. There certainly was no revolutionary overturning of the major directions of the...

This paper addresses the disclosure issues for financial conglomerates principally from the same perspective as that of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision: that disclosure is important for the safety and soundness of banks. However, we reach substantially different conclusions with...

The introduction of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) as a channel for housing finance is a relatively recent event for the United States, having occurred less than three-and-a-half decades ago. This paper provides a brief overview of the MBS process in the U.S. The paper places the MBS process...