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The US Antitrust System and Recent Trends in Antitrust Enforcement
Author(s) -
Lin Ping,
Raj Baldev,
Sandfort Michael,
Slottje Daniel
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
journal of economic surveys
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.657
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 1467-6419
pISSN - 0950-0804
DOI - 10.1111/1467-6419.00111
Subject(s) - consent decree , deregulation , commission , economics , enforcement , government (linguistics) , law enforcement , economic justice , law and economics , law , macroeconomics , political science , finance , microeconomics , linguistics , philosophy
This paper provides a survey of recent research on the US antitrust system. First we provide an overview of the US antitrust system, describing the roles of the US Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission and case law. Second, we provide a new econometric trend analysis on the enforcement of US antitrust law, showing that (1) enforcement demonstrates some trend behavior, as well as comovement with business cycles; (2) the time series of antitrust cases demonstrates two distinct episodes, which we characterize as ‘pre‐deregulation’ and ‘post‐deregulation;’ (3) the time series of government antitrust filings leads the time series of private antitrust filings. Finally, we describe recent economic research relevant to the area of antitrust and the impact of this research on US antitrust policy.