Antitrust With Social, Political Aims Carries Heightened Risks, DOJ Economist Says
Expanding the end goals with which antitrust enforcement concerns itself to include social or political aims like lower unemployment or higher wages could easily lead to problems like false convictions or false acquittals, said DOJ Antitrust Deputy Assistant Attorney General-Economics…
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Luke Froeb at the George Mason Law Review annual Antitrust Symposium Friday. He said pursuing those aims works only if those aims also align with the consumer surplus standard. Froeb said populist critiques of antitrust enforcement -- that it has been too lax, leading to too much industry consolidation and thus higher prices, higher company profits and increased inequality -- aren't supported by data. He said those critiques, which often look at industry consolidation by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code, miss that economists don't believe such industry groupings represent markets, and industry concentration isn't necessarily associated with market concentration. He said the vast majority of markets in merger cases that DOJ challenged were smaller than NAICS industry categories. But he said economics-based criticisms of antitrust enforcement could lead to better tools guiding investigations and more precise targeting of the anticompetitive practices that most harm consumers.