The Effective Competitive Constraint Standard:
The European #Competition Council (ECC) has proposed a new standard for assessing anticompetitive behavior that incorporates modern microeconomic theory and takes a broader view of #ConsumerWelfare. The ECC standard considers #collusion, systemic exclusionary effects, and significant curtailment of rivals' opportunities to compete as #anticompetitive conduct.
https://www.promarket.org/2023/04/12/the-effective-competitive-constraint-standard/
#regulation #IndustrialOrganization

Economism also insists that *power* has no place in predictions about how policies will play out. This is how the #ChicagoSchool economists were able to praise #monopolies as "efficient" systems for maximizing "#ConsumerWelfare" by lowering prices without "wasteful competition."

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The collapse of competition in the US airline industry is the result of a deliberate policy, the "#ConsumerWelfare" theory of #antitrust, which says that #monopolies are "efficient" and good for the public. It's a theory that took root under #Reagan, and was reaffirmed and expanded by every president, R or D, since.

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Bork codified this ideology in a 1978 book called "The Antitrust Paradox," arguing that monopolies are engines of efficiency.

You can tell they're efficient because they're able to take over their markets. Attacking monopolies is counterproductive - why should we punish companies for success? This is the heart of the #ConsumerWelfare theory, but it's underpinned by a much weirder and risible idea: not only is this how the law *should* be written, it's how the law *is* written.

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40 years of #neoliberal #ConsumerWelfare #antitrust - starting with Reagan and continuing through every administration since - has seen the American rail sector achieve levels of concentration that meet and exceed the corrupt, untenable degree of the late 19th century.

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