A tribute to Oliver Williamson: Antitrust economics

California Management Review

Volumn 52, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 138-146

  Shapiro, Carl ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 77950320627     PISSN: 00081256     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/cmr.2010.52.2.138     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. Justice Stephen Breyer was another of Turner's Spedal Assistants, and Judge Richard Posner was working at that time in the Solicitor General's office handling antitrust cases.
2. Oliver E. Williamson, "Economics and Antitrust Enforcement: Transition Years," 2003.
3. Oliver E. Williamson, "Economics and Antitrust Enforcement," 2003, p. 61,
4. citing Ronald H. Coase, "Industrial Organization: A Proposal for Research," in Viaor Fuchs, ed., Policy Issues and Research Issues in Industrial Organization (New York, NY: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1972), p. 69.
5. Oliver E. Williamson, "Selling Expense as a Barrier to Entry," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 77 (February 1963): 112-188.
6. Oliver E. Williamson, "Innovation and Market Struaure," Journal of Political Economy, 73 (February 1965): 67-73.
7. Oliver E. Williamson, "Hierarchical Control and Optimum Firm Size," Journal of Political Economy, 76 (April 1967): 123-138.
8. Oliver E. Williamson, "Wage Rates as a Barrier to Entry: The Pennington Case in Perspective," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 82 (February 1968): 85-116.
9. Brown Shoe v. United States, 370 U.S. 294 (1962), at p. 344.
10. Federal Trade Commission v. Procter & Gamble, Co., 286 U.S. 568 (1967) at p. 579. As noted by Williamson in "The Merger Guidelines of the U.S. Department of Justice - In Perspeaive," (2002), p. 4: "The low opinion and perverse regard for economies went so far that beleaguered respondents disclaimed effidency gains."
11. Oliver E. Williamson, "Economics and Antitrust Enforcement: Transition Years," 2003, p. 64.
12. Oliver E. Williamson, "Economies as an Antitrust Defense: The Welfare Trade-Offs," American Economic Review, 58 (March 1968): 18-36.
13. With pre-existing market power, any price inaease resulting from the merger is more costly in terms of overall effidency; in that realistic and important case, the deadweight loss is represented by a trapezoid, not a triangle. Williamson went on to analyze this point, and others as well, in a subsequent article, "Economies as an Antitrust Defense Revisited," University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 125/4 (April 1977): 699-736.
14. Oliver E. Williamson, "Allocative Effidency and the Limits of Antitrust," American Economic Review, 59 (May 1969): 105-118.
15. Oliver E. Williamson, "The Merger Guidelines of the U.S. Department of Justice - In Perspeaive," remarks presented at the 20th Anniversary of the 1982 Merger Guidelines, June 10, 2002, available at .
16. Oliver E. Williamson, "The Vertical Integration of Production: Market Failure Considerations," American Economic Review, 61 (May 1971): 112-123;
17. Oliver E. Williamson, "Markets and Hierarchies: Some Elementary Considerations," American Economic Review, 63 (May 1973): 316-325.
18. U.S. v. Arnold, Schwinn & Co., 388 U.S. 365 (1967).
19. Oliver E. Williamson, "Economics and Antitrust Enforcement: Transition Years," 2003, p. 64.
20. These changes are often attributed to the influence of the Chicago School of law and economics, with good reason. Ironically, Richard Posner, one of the leaders of the Chicago School, was the author of the Department of Justice's brief in Schwinn. Williamson, applying his transaction cost perspective on vertical contraaing, antidpated a number of the arguments made later by Posner, Robert Bork, and other exponents of the Chicago School.
21. Continental TV Inc. v. GTE Sylvania, Inc., 433 U.S. 36 (1977).
22. Oliver E. Williamson, "The Economics of Antitrust: Transaaion Cost Considerations," University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 111 (June 1974): 1439-1496.
23. Oliver E. Williamson, "Assessing Vertical Market Restriaions: Antitrust Ramifications of the Transaaions Cost Approach," University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 127 (April 1979): 953-993.
24. Leegin Creative Leather Products v. PSKS, Inc., 551 U.S. 877 (2007), overruling Dr. Miles Medical Co. v. John D. Park & Sons Co., 220 U.S. 373(1911). More predsely, Leegin ruled that minimum resale price maintenance, the praaice of prohibiting retailers from setting price below a spedfic level, was no longer perse illegal. The Court had previously ruled that maximum resale price maintenance was no longer per se illegal, in State Oil Co. v. Khan, 511 U.S. 3, 15 (1997).
25. Oliver E. Williamson, "Vertical Merger Guidelines: Interpreting the 1982 Reforms," University of California Law Review. 71 (March 1983): 604-617;
26. Oliver E. Williamson, "Transforming Merger Policy: The Pound of New Perspeaives," American Economic Review, 78 (May 1986): 114-119.
27. Oliver E. Williamson, "Dominant Firms and the Monopoly Problem: Market Failure Considerations," Harvard Law Review, 85 (June 1972): 1512-1531.
28. Oliver E. Williamson, "Franchise Bidding for Natural Monopolies - in General and with Respea to CATV," The Bell Journal of Economics, 7 (Spring 1976): 73-104.
29. Oliver E. Williamson, "Predatory Pricing: A Strategic and Welfare Analysis," Yale Law Journal, 87 (December 1977): 284-340;
30. "Williamson on Predatory Pricing, II," Yale Law Journal, 88 (May 1979): 1183-1200.
31. See also Oliver E. Williamson, "Pretrial Uses of Economists: On the Use of 'Incentive Logic' to Saeen Predation," Antitrust Bulletin, 29 (Fall 1984): 475-500.
32. Oliver E. Williamson, "Book Review: Robert H. Bork, The Antitrust Paradox: A Policy at War with Itself," University of Chicago Law Review, 46 (Winter 1979): 526-531.
33. These ideas were developed nicely by Paul Joskow in "Transaction Cost Economics, Antitrust Rules, and Remedies," The Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, 18/1 (2002): 95-116.