In antitrust enforcement as in cost-benefit analysis, neoclassical economics may be interpreted as arguing for the use of a “total welfare” standard whose implementation treats transfers as welfare-neutral. Several recent papers call for antitrust agencies to move in the direction of this...

40 states and the District of Columbia have laws that authorize public charter schools to provide public education with public funds, in competition with regular public schools. However, many of these laws contain provisions that have hardly any rationale except to restrain competition,...

The railways of Russia and the CEE countries — generally much more freight oriented, and much more important to their countries' economies, than those of Western Europe — are in the process of restructuring. In most cases the "vertical separation" reform model is being pursued, and reformers...

While most economic analysis of the effects of market power has focused on monopoly power (a single seller of a good) or cartels among sellers, there has always remained some degree of interest in monopsony power (a single buyer) or buying cartels. In the United States there have been antitrust...

This study explores the possibility that local market power influences the observed asymmetric relationship between changes in wholesale gasoline costs and changes in retail gasoline prices. I exploit an original data set of weekly gas station prices in Southern California from September 2002 to...

In this article, I explain the inadequacy of our current state of knowledge regarding the effectiveness of antitrust policy towards mergers. I then discuss the types of data that one must collect in order to be able to perform an analysis of the effectiveness of antitrust policy. There are two...

Mergers in any industry can raise complicated questions about the elimination of competition and the achievement of efficiencies. Mergers in regulated industries such as electricity raise even more complicated issues as the analyst needs to grapple with the constraining effects of regulation,...

In 2002, Congress established the Antitrust Modernization Commission to address whether the antitrust laws needed to be changed in light of globalization and rapid technological change. This paper addresses that question. Although the basic framework of the antitrust laws is suitable to deal...

This paper studies the effect of product ownership and quality on nonstop entry in the airline industry. Specifically, this paper empirically examines the decision of an airline to offer high quality nonstop service between cities given that the airline may or may not be offering lower quality...

The holdup problem of under-investment in specific capital has been studied extensively. Less attention has been paid to the "holdout" problem of over-investment in outside options. A buyer's gain from (unverifiably) developing an outside option exceeds the joint gain, given rent shifting when...