Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Elhauge, Einer --- "Introduction and Overview to Current Issues in Antitrust Economics" [2012] ELECD 214; in Elhauge, R. Einer (ed), "Research Handbook on the Economics of Antitrust Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Research Handbook on the Economics of Antitrust Law

Editor(s): Elhauge, R. Einer

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848440807

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: Introduction and Overview to Current Issues in Antitrust Economics

Author(s): Elhauge, Einer

Number of pages: 22

Extract:

1 Introduction and overview to current issues in
antitrust economics
Einer Elhauge


Although economic analysis of law is increasingly important in many legal fields, perhaps
no field of law is as dominated by economics as antitrust law. This no doubt reflects a
confluence of factors. First, serious economic analysis of law really began with antitrust
law, so economic analysis into antitrust issues has had time to go deeper and wider than
economic analysis of other legal fields. Second, so much of standard microeconomics is
directly relevant, given that antitrust involves regulating market competition. Third, the
courts and enforcement agencies have grounded antitrust legal doctrines explicitly in
concepts of antitrust economics. Fourth, because of the last factor, antitrust law creates
a series of issues on which expert testimony on antitrust economics is relevant, meaning
that every antitrust case of significance has at least one (often more) testifying expert on
antitrust economics on each side. Antitrust law is thus unusual not only in the extent to
which it turns on economics, but also in the extent to which that economics is vigorously
debated in each case.
One might mistakenly think that such a long tradition would mean that there would
be little new to say about antitrust economics. Yet antitrust economics is surprisingly
dynamic and changing. In part, this is because new decisions or legal developments, often
in response to old economic developments, tend to raise new economic issues. In part,
it is because the continued testing of economic logic in adversarial ...