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United States’ Antitrust: At the Crossroads

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Mainstreams in Industrial Organization

Part of the book series: Studies in Industrial Organization ((SIOR,volume 6))

Abstract

The enforcement and interpretation of the United States’ antitrust laws have gone through several phases of stringent and lax enforcement over the nearly 100 years since the Sherman Act’s passage. It is tempting to interpret the recent permissive posture of the courts and the antitrust enforcement agencies as yet another phase that will pass with a new restructuring of the Supreme Court and the lower courts, and a new antitrust philosophy at the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission. Such an intepretation would be misleading, however, in two respects. First, it would fail to recognize the important and I think permanent shift in judicial opinion as to the proper role of economic analysis in antitrust proceedings. Second, it would ignore the shift in thinking within the economics’ profession regarding the weight of evidence in support of the various provisions of the antitrust laws.

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Authors
  1. Dennis C. Mueller
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    H. W. de Jong

  2. University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, USA

    W. G. Shepherd

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© 1986 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Mueller, D.C. (1986). United States’ Antitrust: At the Crossroads. In: de Jong, H.W., Shepherd, W.G. (eds) Mainstreams in Industrial Organization. Studies in Industrial Organization, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0493-9_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0493-9_9

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-017-0495-3

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