Welfare Economics and Antitrust Policy — Vol. II

Book excerpt: This book is Volume II of a two-volume set on antitrust policy, analyzing the economic efficiency and moral desirability of various kinds of antitrust-policy-coverable conduct and various possible government responses to such conduct, including US and EU antitrust law. The overall study consists of three parts. Part I (Chapters 1-8) introduces readers to the economic, moral, and legal concepts that play important roles in antitrust-policy analysis. Part II (Chapters 9-16) analyzes the impacts of eight types of conduct covered by antitrust policy and various possible government responses to such conduct in terms of their economic efficiency, their impact on liberal moral rights, and their instantiation of various utilitarian and other egalitarian conceptions of the moral good. Part III (Chapters 17-18) provides detailed information on US antitrust law and EU competition law and compares the extent to which—when correctly interpreted and applied—these two bodies of law could increase economic efficiency, protect liberal moral rights, and instantiate various morally defensible conceptions of the moral good. This second volume contains the last 6 chapters of Part II, which focus respectively on horizontal (M&A)s, conglomerate (M&A)s, surrogates for vertical integration, vertical (M&A)s, joint ventures, and internal growth and Part III, which focuses on US antitrust law and EU competition law. The book will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students of economics and law who are interested in welfare economics, antitrust policy, and The General Theory of Second Best.