When firms collude and charge supra-competitive prices, consumers can bring antitrust lawsuits against the firms. When the litigation cost is low, firms accept the cost as just another cost of doing business, whereas when the cost is high, the firms lower the price to deter litigation. Class...

The study focuses on the admissibility and assessment of economic expertise in EC competition law litigation. I start by exploring the broader issues raised by the integration of economic expertise in litigation: in particular the risk of moral hazard and adverse selection because of the...

This paper reviews the legal and economic structure of the class action litigation model in the United States, as set forth by rule 23 of US civil procedure, exploring the requirements for obtaining class certification and maintaining a class action. I analyze a number of critical issues and...

Following its landmark decisions in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the Supreme Court allows federal judges to dismiss cases when the plaintiff's allegations are conclusory or implausible, thereby increasing the judges' discretionary power in pleading stages of litigation. Using...

In competition law, the problem of the optimal design of institutional and procedural rules concerns assessment processes of the pro- and anticompetitiveness of business behaviors. This is well recognized in the discussion about the relative merits of different assessment principles such as the...

This article examines how the burden of proof is allocated in private antitrust suits in China, and tries to assess whether the criticism about the high burden of proof is merited. In that quest, the article lays out the general principle for the burden of proof in antitrust cases in China. It...

From a consequentialist perspective, the deterrence of undesirable behavior is one of the main functions of a legal system. For antitrust law, the deterrence of cartel behavior is its least controversial goal. Cartels harm markets economies with static and dynamic inefficiencies. And...

This chapter provides a survey of the law and literature on monopolization. The focus is American law, but the issues considered are equally applicable to European law. After briefly reviewing the history of monopolization law in the U.S., I review various approaches to the legal standard for...