In the autumn of 2014 the residents of Scotland, but not other parts of the UK, will vote on whether to leave the UK to become a separate state, with a positive vote leading to an independent parliament being elected in 2016. It would remain within the EU and in compliance with its acquis...

The Sherman Act establishes free competition as the rule governing interstate trade. Banning private restraints cannot ensure that competitive markets allocate the nation’s resources. State laws can pose identical threats to free markets, posing an obstacle to achieving Congress’s goal to...

The state action doctrine was born in an era of exceptional confidence in government, with governmental entities widely regarded as unbiased and conscientious defenders of the public interest. Over time, however, more cautious and skeptical theories of government began to gain sway. In...

Hybrid governance structures between markets and hierarchies in many industries, e.g., in energy and telecommunications, challenge antitrust and regulation policy. The paper focuses on the theoretical and methodological basis provided by the New Institutional Economics (NIE) for analyzing the...

Hybrid governance structures between markets and hierarchies in many industries, e.g., in energy and telecommunications, challenge antitrust and regulation policy. The paper focuses on the theoretical and methodological basis provided by the New Institutional Economics (NIE) for analyzing the...

This paper is an account of the institutions of antitrust enforcement and adjudication in nine jurisdictions, across six continents, and the four principal international bodies involved with issues of antitrust. It synthesizes nine studies that illuminate the inner workings of each of systems in...

Politicians connected to elites who anticipated benefiting from the 1866 Post Roads Act overcame the problem of collective action and passed pro-consumer legislation over the objections of a concentrated economic interest. Mancur Olson's (1965, 1982) theory on the cost of collective action...

The United States federal government preempted anti-competitive state and municipal telegraph regulations when the 1866 Post Roads Act was enacted. The act granted a de facto national franchise to build and operate a telegraph system anywhere in the United States to any telegraph company...

Some legislators, especially on the far Left, have set their sights on making radical changes to federal antitrust law. They seek to weaponize antitrust law, such as by making it much easier for the federal government to wield antitrust power to reshape industries and the entire economy. This is...