Antitrust Law: An Economic Perspective [Paperback]

Richard A. Posner (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press (February 1978)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226675580
• ISBN-13: 978-0226675589
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,027,393 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Richard A. Posner is a judge of the U.S. Court Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. He is the author of numerous books, including Overcoming Law, a New York Times Book Review editors' choices for best book of 1995 and An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton, one of Times' choices for Best Book of the Year in 1999 and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist, 2000.

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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Antitrust theory by Chief Judge Richard Posner, June 1, 1999

By 

Robert J. Peterson, robert_peterson@compuserv... (Chicago, Illinois) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Antitrust Law: An Economic Perspective (Paperback)

Richard A. Posner is Chief Judge of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and a professor and the University of Chicago Law School. In addition to being one of the most cited judges in U.S. legal history and one of the founders of the Law and Economics school of legal theory, Judge Posner is also one of the fathers of modern antitrust theory.

This book is somewhat dated, but this is primarily due to the fact that it has been so widely read (and its policies so widely adopted) by other American judges. Up until the late 1970s, U.S. antitrust law was characterized by the pursuit of two (sometimes conflicting) goals: protecting consumers from monopolies and price fixing, and protecting "small dealers and worthy men" from larger competitors. Posner's book and a similar volume by Judge Robert Bork (The Antitrust Paradox) laid the theoretical groundwork for a seminal shift in antitrust thinking--one focusing primarily on consumer welfare.

In Antitrust Economics, Posner describes in easy-to-understand terms why monopolies are bad from an economic point of view, and the shape of current antitrust law. He then lays out why some types of economic behavior that up until then had been considered anticompetitive (mergers between competitors, some types of exclusive supplier arrangements) can actually be pro-competitive or, at the least, pro-consumer. For example, while retail behemoths such as WalMart or mergers like that between Daimler-Benz and Chrysler may be devastating to smaller competitors, they may benefit consumers by generating economies of scale and lower prices.

Regardless of whether one agrees with Posner's theories or the economic concentration in many industries that followed the adoption of his ideas, "Antitrust Economics" is essential reading if one wants to understand how we got to where we are and the theory behind modern antitrust law.