Economics for Competition Lawyers provides a comprehensive explanation of the economic principles most relevant for competition law. Written specifically for competition lawyers, it uses real-world examples, is non-technical, and explains the key points from first principles.

Experts examine the application of economic theory to antitrust issues in both the United States and Europe, discussing mergers, agreements, abuses of dominance, and the impact of market features. Over the past twenty years, economic theory has begun to play a central role in antitrust matters. In earlier days, the application of antitrust rules was viewed almost entirely in formal terms; now it is widely accepted that the proper interpretation of these rules requires an understanding of how markets work and how firms can alter their efficient functioning. The Handbook of Antitrust Economics offers scholars, students, administrators, courts, companies, and lawyers the economist's view of the subject, describing the application of newly developed theoretical models and improved empirical methods to antitrust and competition law in both the United States and the European Union. (The book uses the U.S. term “antitrust law” and the European “competition law” interchangeably, emphasizing the commonalities between the two jurisdictions.) After a general discussion of the use of empirical methods in antitrust cases, the Handbook covers mergers, agreements, abuses of dominance (or unilateral conducts), and market features that affect the way firms compete. Chapters examine such topics as analyzing the competitive effects of both horizontal and vertical mergers, detecting and preventing cartels, theoretical and empirical analysis of vertical restraints, state aids, the relationship of competition law to the defense of intellectual property, and the application of antitrust law to “bidding markets,” network industries, and two-sided markets. Contributors Mark Armstrong, Jonathan B. Baker, Timothy F. Bresnahan, Paulo Buccirossi, Nicholas Economides, Hans W. Friederiszick, Luke M. Froeb, Richard J. Gilbert, Joseph E. Harrington, Jr., Paul Klemperer, Kai-Uwe Kuhn, Francine Lafontaine, Damien J. Neven, Patrick Rey, Michael H. Riordan, Jean-Charles Rochet, Lars-Hendrick Röller, Margaret Slade, Giancarlo Spagnolo, Jean Tirole, Thibaud Vergé, Vincent Verouden, John Vickers, Gregory J. Werden

From the man who coined the term "net neutrality" and who has made significant contributions to our understanding of antitrust policy and wireless communications, comes a call for tighter antitrust enforcement and an end to corporate bigness.

"The economic expert has become a central figure in virtually every antitrust litigation or merger matter, and the importance of econometrics has increased significantly. A basic understanding of econometric principles has now become almost essential to the serious antitrust practitioner. This volume is designed to introduce lawyers to the theoretical and practical issues of econometrics, providing necessary tools for working effectively with economic experts on both sides of a matter." -- from the Foreword, p. xv.

William Letwin's thorough, carefully argued, and elegantly written work is the only book length study of the Sherman Antitrust Act, a law designed to shape the economic life of a large complex society through maintaining the "correct" level of competition in the economy. This is a superb history and complete analysis of the Act, from its English and American common law antecedents to the events that led to the first revisions of the Act in the form of the Clayton Antitrust and Federal Trade Commission Acts.

In the field of antitrust, the freedoms to contract and compete can and do contradict. Profit-maximizing companies desire perfectly competitive input markets to minimize their costs, but want monopolistic markets for their outputs to maximize their profits. Consequently, they have strong incentives to undermine competition in their output markets. In a world without antitrust laws, many companies would thus eliminate competition by using their freedom to contract, either by entering into legally enforceable agreements which fix prices or divide up markets, or by merging and acquiring rivals to gain market control. Therefore, guaranteeing and safeguarding companies' abilities to compete comes at the cost of restricting their freedoms to contract. The states role in this task is a delicate one though: government intervention itself necessarily limits the economic freedom of individuals and firms, and limiting the freedom of contract has potentially detrimental effects on economic activity as well. Hence, antitrust policy must find the right balance between the two freedoms of competition and contract, allowing competition to flourish while upholding the contractual freedoms necessary for a functioning market. The policies in the U.S. and Europe used to protect competition with per se rules, setting clear boundaries for the freedom to contract where it interfered with the freedom to compete. Over the past decades, improvements in economic analysis provided measurable dimensions for 'competition' through measures like efficiency and welfare. With these new and complex economic tools, the aim of an antitrust policy moved away from an 'indirect' mechanism which provided and enforced a strict framework of negative per se rules within which the competitive process was allowed to happen. The current policies directly aim at promoting welfare by attempting to 'balance' the welfare effects of individual business practices, permitting contracts or mergers with benign effects and prohibiting contracts with detrimental effects on welfare in potentially every case. These economic insights have promoted a better understanding of the competitive process and contributed to improved antitrust rules. However, in the actual enforcement of antitrust laws, recent developments caused by the influence of economic analysis have had a detrimental impact on antitrust policy in both the U.S. and the EU. First, it increased the discretion of competition authorities, lowering legal certainty for companies and increasing the potential for wrong decisions. Second, it gave companies incentives to waste resources on rent seeking activities by using economic analyses to demonstrate efficiencies in complicated and timely investigations and litigation. And third, the predominant use of economic analysis has massively increased the costs of enforcement. This thesis is the first one to depict these negative effects caused by recent developments and shows that a policy with clear limitations through proposed per se rules would be superior for it would eliminate the illustrated negative effects.