Explaining why market definitions are inherently arbitrary, this publication defines 'oligopolistic' and 'predatory' business conduct, analyzes their profitability, and provides a critique of the market-oriented approach used by US and EU law-enforcement.

This volume (1) defines the specific-anticompetitive-intent, lessening-competition, distorting-competition, and exploitative-abuse tests of illegality promulgated by U.S. and/or E.U. antitrust law, (2) compares the efficiency defenses promulgated by U.S. and E.U. antitrust law, (3) compares the conduct-coverage of the various U.S. and E.U. antitrust laws, (4) defines price competition and quality-or-variety-increasing-investment (QV-investment) competition and explains why they should be analyzed separately, (5) defines the components of individualized-pricing and across-the-board-pricing sellers' price minus marginal cost gaps and analyses each's determinants, (6) defines the determinants of the intensity of QV-investment competition and explains how they determine that intensity, (7) demonstrates that definitions of both classical and antitrust markets are inevitably arbitrary, not just at their periphery but comprehensively, (8) criticizes the various protocols for market definition recommended/used by scholars, the U.S. antitrust agencies, the European Commission, and U.S. and E.U. courts, (9) explains that a firm's economic (market) power or dominance depends on its power over both price and QV investment and demonstrates that, even if markets could be defined non-arbitrarily, a firm's economic power could not be predicted from its market share, (10) articulates a definition of oligopolistic conduct that some economists have implicitly usedconduct whose perpetrator-perceived ex ante profitability depended critically on the perpetrator's belief that its rivals' responses would be affected by their belief that it could react to their responses, distinguishes two types of such conductcontrived and naturalby whether it entails anticompetitive threats and/or offers, explains why this distinction is critical under U.S. but not E.U. antitrust law, analyzes the profitability of each kind ofoligopolistic conduct, examines these analyses' implications for each's antitrust legality, and criticizes related U.S. and E.U. case-law and doctrine and scholarly positions (e.g., on the evidence that establishes the illegal oligopolistic character of pricing), and (11) executes parallel analyses of predatory conduct--e.g., criticizes various arguments for the inevitable unprofitability of predatory pricing, the various tests that economists/U.S. courts advocate using/use to determine whether pricing is predatory, and two analyses by economists of the conditions under which QV investment and systems rivalry are predatory and examines the conditions under which production-process research, plant-modernization, and long-term full-requirements contracts are predatory.

Self-contained, combines sophisticated economic analysis with sophisticated legal analysis, Provides clear operational definitions of all the economic and legal concepts it uses, Relies primarily on verbal explanations, and when it uses mathematics, limits itself mathematically to arithmetical examples and two-dimensional diagrams Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Autorentext

Richard Markovits, the John B. Connally Chair in Law at the University of Texas, has a Ph.D. in economics (London School of Economics) and an L.L.B. (Yale University). Markovits has taught in the law or economics faculties of six U.S., two U.K., and 5 German universities. From 1981-83, he was Co-Director of the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at Oxford. He has also been a panelist for the U.S. NSF and the U.K. SSRC Economics Affairs Committee, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Markovits has published 58 articles and two books Matters of Principle (on jurisrprudence and constitutional law) (NYU, 2000) and Truth or Economics (on theoretical and applied welfare economics) (Yale, 2008).

Inhalt

Foreword to the Two-Volume Series.- Introduction to This Study.- Introduction to Part I: Basic Concepts and Approaches.- Chapter 1: The Correct Definition of the Impact of a Choice on Economic Efficiency.- Chapter 2: The Components of the Difference Between a Firm's Price and Conventional Marginal Costs and the Intermediate Determinants of the Intensity of Quality-and-Variety-Increasing-Investment Competition.- Chapter 3: The Definitions of Monopolizing Conduct, Attempts to Monopolize, and Exclusionary Abuses.- Chapter 4: The Conduct-Coverage of, Tests of Legality Promulgated by, and Defenses (U.S. Spelling) or Defences (British Spelling) Recognized by U.S. Antitrust Law and E.C./E.U. Competition Law.- Chapter 5: The Categories of Economic-Efficiency Gains Whose Generation by Business Conduct Respectively Are and Are Not Relevant to the Conduct's Antitrust Legality.- Chapter 6: The Inevitable Arbitrariness of Market Definitions and the Unjustifiability of Market-Oriented Antitrust Analyses.- Chapter 7: Economic and Antitrust Markets: Their Abstract Definition, Their Delimitability, and the Methods That Have Been Proposed and Used to Identify Concrete Exemplars.- Chapter 8: The Operational Definition of A Firm's Monopoly Power, Oligopoly Power, and Total (Market) Power in a Given ARDEPPS.- Chapter 9: The Need to Analyze Separately the Monopolizing Character, Abusiveness, Competitive Impact, and Economic Efficiency of Business Choices.- Conclusion to Part I.- Introduction to Part II.- Chapter 10: Oligopolistic Conduct.- Chapter 11: Predatory Conduct.