Antitrust Enforcement Regimes: Fundamental Differences

Antitrust Enforcement ∗

This article explores the enforcement of those laws intended to promote competitive markets through the prohibition of certain practices such as price-fixing, welfare-reducing mergers, and monopolization. The discovery and prosecution of violations are examined including the role of leniency programs. The determination of penalties is investigated with an assessment of their relationship to opt...

Antitrust Enforcement and Marginal Deterrence

We study antitrust enforcement in which the fine must obey four legal principles: punishments should fit the crime, proportionality, bankruptcy considerations, and minimum fines. We integrate these legal principles into an infinitely-repeated oligopoly model. Bankruptcy considerations ensure abnormal cartel profits. We derive the optimal fine schedule that achieves maximal social welfare under ...

Legal Principles in Antitrust Enforcement

We study antitrust enforcement that channels price-fixing incentives through setting fines and allocating resources to detection activities. Antitrust fines obey four legal principles: punishments should fit the crime, proportionality, bankruptcy considerations, and minimum fines. Bankruptcy considerations limit maximum fines, ensure abnormal cartel profits and impose a challenge for optimal an...

FEDERAL AntitRust EnFoRcEmEnt in HEALtH cARE

In previous Expert Voices essays, William Vogt, Austin Frakt and James Robinson discussed consolidation in hospital markets and cited a large and growing literature that finds a direct correlation between consolidation and hospital prices, with at best mixed evidence of improved quality. All three essayists suggested that the Federal Trade Commission must do more to limit anticompetitive consol...

Antitrust enforcement: putting the consumer first.