Segregation of Markets

Campaign-finance reformers fear that rich donors’ money can be used disproportionately to influence the content of campaign advertising and thus, perhaps, the results of elections. In European football, UEFA has attempted to ban “financial doping,” rich owners’ use of money earned in sectors other than football to pay large sums for the best football players. Campaign-finance reform efforts and “financial fair play” rules in sport may seem like bespoke solutions to different problems. In fact, they are the same solution to the same problem. Both are attempts to ensure that power accumulated in one market is not brought into another market so as to distort and damage its proper functioning. Market segregation, which seeks to bar explicit or implicit trans-market “currency” exchanges, disconnects the markets’ decisionmaking rationales. By understanding the segregation regulatory tool and its characteristic difficulties, including the appearance of black-market currency exchanges and the entrenchment of incumbents, it is possible to see in more general terms the challenges in many other legal settings, including moral rights and so-called “repugnant transactions.”