Abstract
The Clayton Act of 1914 was one of the major pieces of legislation of the Progressive Era in American history. It prohibited four specific types of monopolistic practices: (1) price discrimination; (2) exclusive-dealing contracts and tying agreements; (3) the acquisition of competing companies through stock purchases; and (4) interlocking directorates among companies with a market value of at least $1 million, and in the same industry. Its main objective was to prevent business practices that may tend “to substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly.” It underwent several amendments in subsequent years partly because of lax judicial interpretations. The most important ones include the Robison-Patman Act of 1936, which strengthened price discrimination prohibition, and the Celler-Kefauver Act of 1950, which prohibited corporate mergers that would tend to reduce competition or promote monopolies (Shughart, 1990; Shenefield and Stelzer, 2001).
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Ramírez, C.D. (2004). The Clayton Act. In: Rowley, C.K., Schneider, F. (eds) The Encyclopedia of Public Choice. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-306-47828-4_51
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-306-47828-4_51
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