When Economics met Antitrust : The Second Chicago Scool and the Economization of Antitrust Law - Enterprise and Society

The paper devoted to the economization of the US Antitrust Law is now available online.

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9655860&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S1467222714000184

It deals with the influence of the Second Chicago School on the increasing use of the economic analysis in competition law cases.

This paper is a revised version of  the GREDEG Working Paper published with Patrice Bougette and Marc Deschamps.

http://www.gredeg.cnrs.fr/working-papers/GREDEG-WP-2014-23.pdf


Its abstract :

In this article, the authors interrogate legal and economic history to analyze the process by which the Chicago School of Antitrust emerged in the 1950s and became dominant in the United States. They show that the extent to which economic objectives and theoretical views shaped the inception of antitrust law. After establishing the minor influence of economics in the promulgation of U.S. competition law, they highlight U.S. economists’ caution toward antitrust until the Second New Deal and analyze the process by which the Chicago School developed a general and coherent framework for competition policy. They rely mainly on the seminal and programmatic work of Director and Levi (1956) and trace how this theoretical paradigm became collective—that is, the “economization” process in U.S. antitrust. Finally, the authors discuss the implications and possible pitfalls of such a conversion to economics-led antitrust enforcement.