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Regime Shift in Antitrust

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Author Info
Ghosal, Vivek

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Abstract

This paper empirically models the longer-run deep-seated shift in intellectual thinking that followed the Chicago School’s criticism of the older antitrust doctrine, the shorter-run driving forces related to switches of the political party in power, merger waves, changes in economic activity and the level of funding and quantifies their impact on enforcement by the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice over the period 1958-2002. The key findings are: (1) a distinct regime-shift in antitrust enforcement during the 1970s and, post-regime-shift, there has been a marked compositional change with a quantitatively large increase (decrease) in criminal (civil) antitrust court cases initiated; (2) post-regime-shift, there appears to be a change in the role played by politics with Republicans initiating more (less) criminal (civil) court cases than Democrats and the estimated quantitative effects are large; (3) disaggregating the total number of court cases into the main categories under which they are initiated (price-fixing, mergers, monopolization and restraints-of-trade) shows that individual types of cases have widely differing responses to changes in the driving forces; and (4) in a horse-race between the regime-shift and political effect on one side and the remaining variables on the other, the former forces win hands-down in explaining broad shifts in enforcement. Modeling the longer-run shift and disaggregating the court cases emerge as crucial to gaining insights into the intertemporal shifts in enforcement. The paper elaborates on the causes for the shift in enforcement and on the effectiveness of antitrust.

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Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number 5460.

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Date of creation: Feb 2007
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Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:5460

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Related research
Keywords: Antitrust enforcement regime-shift politics supreme court effectiveness.

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
L40 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - General
B00 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - General - - - General
K00 - Law and Economics - - General - - - General (including Data Sources and Description)
M20 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting - - Business Economics - - - General

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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    Other versions:
  7. Robert W. Crandall & Clifford Winston, 2003. "Does Antitrust Policy Improve Consumer Welfare? Assessing the Evidence," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(4), pages 3-26, Fall. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  13. Stock, James H & Watson, Mark W, 1996. "Evidence on Structural Instability in Macroeconomic Time Series Relations," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 14(1), pages 11-30, January.
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  14. Bergman, Mats A. & Jakobsson, Maria & Razo, Carlos, 2003. "An Econometric Analysis of the European Commission's Merger Decisions," Working Paper Series 2003:6, Uppsala University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  15. Jonathan B. Baker, 2003. "The Case for Antitrust Enforcement," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(4), pages 27-50, Fall. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  16. Andrews, Donald W K, 1993. "Tests for Parameter Instability and Structural Change with Unknown Change Point," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(4), pages 821-56, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  17. Ghosal, Vivek, 2002. "Potential foreign competition in US manufacturing," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 20(10), pages 1461-1489, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  18. Basu, Susanto, 1996. "Procyclical Productivity: Increasing Returns or Cyclical Utilization?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 111(3), pages 719-51, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Jeroen Hinloopen & Adriaan Soetevent, 2006. "Trust and Recidivism; the Partial Success of Corporate Leniency Program in the Laboratory," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 06-067/1, Tinbergen Institute. [Downloadable!]
  2. Ghosal, Vivek, 2006. "Discovering Cartels: Dynamic Interrelationships between Civil and Criminal Antitrust Investigations," MPRA Paper 5499, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
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