Randy Stutz writes that the Biden administration has recalibrated antirust policy by devoting more equal enforcement attention to competition in buyers’ markets and sellers’ markets, thereby promoting the welfare of both suppliers and consumers. The shift raises questions about whether courts should engage in “multi-market balancing”—the weighing of harms in one market against benefits in a different market—when the interests of suppliers and consumers diverge.| ProMarket
Daniel Francis reviews the evolutionary and revolutionary dimensions of the Biden administration’s antitrust work, and argues that these two projects have been in deep tension. He concludes that the administration’s evolutionary work within the welfarist paradigm has generated some important successes, but that the revolutionary effort to restore a pre-welfarist vision of antitrust has failed on its own terms — and, in failing, has left welfarism all the stronger.| ProMarket
ProMarket is the publication of the George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. ProMarket is an academic forum focused on topics of special interest capture, antitrust, political economy, and the future of capitalism. Economists have become increasingly technical and specialized, […]| ProMarket