The paper develops a four-step framework to detect anticompetitive horizontal mergers. In the first step, an estimate of the impact of the merger on the market price needs to be derived. Subsequent, the second step of the framework has to assess whether such a predicted price increase would be...

Unreasonably exclusionary conduct, the element common to monopolization and attempted monopolization offenses under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, remains essentially undefined. Federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have purported to define the term, but the definitions they have...

Blockchain may transform transactions the same way the Internet altered the dissemination and nature of information. If that were to be the case, all relationships between companies would change, including prohibited ones such as collusive agreements. For that reason, the stakes are crucial and...

Scholars and antitrust enforcers have raised concerns about anticompetitive effects that may arise when institutional investors hold substantial stakes in competing firms. Their concern rests on empirical evidence that such common concentrated ownership is associated with higher prices and lower...

The Rule of Reason, which has come to dominate modern antitrust law, allows defendants the opportunity to justify their conduct by demonstrating “procompetitive” effects. Seizing the opportunity, defendants have begun offering increasingly numerous and creative explanations for their...

This paper proposes an understanding of abuse of collective dominance or shared monopolization that does not outlaw oligopolistic tacit collusion as such, but that reputes abusive a set of tactics adopted by tacitly colluding oligopolists exposed to disruption. As much as deviation is an...

This paper expands on an idea recently voiced by neo-Brandeisians and formally modelled by economists in the past two decades – namely, that the Chicago School’s arguments for the harmless and efficiency generating nature of vertical integration do not apply on zero-priced monetized markets....

Patent settlements between rivals restrain competition in many different ways. Antitrust requires that their anticompetitive effects are reasonably commensurate with the firms’ expectations about (counterfactual) patent litigation. Because these expectations are private and non-verifiable,...

Partial ownership of stock in multiple competing firms is an important scholarly and policy topic in both corporate and antitrust law. Until now, the discussion has focused on ownership. This essay shifts the debate from a focus on common ownership to a focus on common control. No prior work has...

Focusing on collusive behavior, this chapter outlines the complexity associated with both the ex ante design of antitrust compliance programs and the ex post assessment of their impact. Following an interdisciplinary review of relevant literature, the chapter provides a structured cost–benefit...