Is it Worth all the Trouble? The Costs and Benefits of Antitrust Enforcement

Kai Hüschelrath
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Kai Hueschelrath

No 08-107, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: The paper aims at assessing the costs and benefits of antitrust enforcement. The analysis starts with an investigation of why competition is typically worth protecting followed by a collection of empirical evidence which shows that competition actually needs protection by antitrust policy in order to hinder firms to permanently abuse market power to the detriment of consumers. Subsequently, an estimation of the costs and benefits of antitrust enforcement is undertaken for the United States and the Netherlands. The analysis differentiates between an aggregate level approach which basically focuses on deadweight losses and a disaggregate level approach which estimates the benefits of antitrust enforcement in particular antitrust cases and compares these figures with estimates of the costs of antitrust enforcement. The results basically show for the United States and the Netherlands that the realised benefits overtop the realised costs by far as long as overcharges/redistribution effects and deadweight losses are considered as welfare loss. However, if only the avoidance of deadweight losses is considered as benefit of antitrust policy, the benefits estimate for cartel and merger enforcement under a disaggregate approach cannot cover the derived cost estimate for the United States and the Netherlands.

Keywords: Antitrust policy; antitrust enforcement; cost-benefit analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K21 L40 L49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:7497

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