Economics in Antitrust Enforcement and the Private Benefit of Scholarly Commentators
16 Pages Posted: 16 Jan 2017 Last revised: 19 Jan 2017
Date Written: January 13, 2017
Abstract
Academic commentators maintain advocating more economics in antitrust enforcement than it would be optimal from the societal point of view. It has been proposed that this advocacy arises from the private benefit that the commentators obtain from the enforcement use of economics. This article examines the plausibility of this proposition. It compiles the available data on the size of business and employment opportunities for antitrust practitioners to show that there is a significant private benefit associated with the enforcement use of economics. Because the boundary between antitrust practice and academia is permeable, this private benefit is capable of distorting the scholarly commentary. Literature on an analogous issue advances that such distortions of the academic discourse arising from practice-related benefits enjoyed by academic commentators are not rare. Additional incentives come from big businesses that benefit from the excessive use of economics and, therefore, reward commentary that advocates it. The proposition therefore appears to be reasonably plausible.
Keywords: antitrust economics; political economy; public choice
JEL Classification: K00, K20, K21, K40, K42, L00, L40
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation