The ‘crisis’ of antitrust economics

Jorge Padilla

Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 2024, vol. 40, issue 4, 706-717

Abstract: The extant antitrust frameworks in the EU, UK, and US are being challenged conceptually, ideologically, and empirically. In particular, they are criticized for downplaying the economic and political cost of under-enforcement. In this article I accept, for the sake of the argument, that enforcement has been excessively lenient, though I believe the jury is still out, and focus on investigating whether the alleged under-enforcement of the competition laws is caused by the move towards a ‘more-economics approach’ to competition law enforcement. In my opinion, the evidence is mixed. Yet, the answer should not be less economics but better economics and greater scrutiny of both economic and non-economic evidence when they fail to point in the same direction.

Keywords: antitrust; deterrence; economics; false negatives; legal standards (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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