Herbert Hovenkamp

Herbert Hovenkamp is the James G. Dinan University Professor, Penn Law and the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2008 won the Justice Department’s John Sherman Award for lifetime contributions to antitrust law. His legal history writing includes The Opening of American Law: Neoclassical Legal Thought, 1870-1970 (Oxford, 2015); Enterprise and American Law, 1836-1937 (Harvard, 1991). His principal antitrust scholarship includes Antitrust Law (with the late Phillip E. Areeda and the late Donald F. Turner, 1978-2020).

Antitrust and Competition

Did the Supreme Court Fix “Brown Shoe”?

The Supreme Court’s 1962 Brown Shoe decision, which found a merger to be anticompetitive even though it would have reduced prices for...

Antitrust and Competition

The Life of Antitrust’s Consumer Welfare Model

“Consumer welfare” as an objective of antitrust law and regulation has its origins in several vague and even conflicting ideas of how...

Antitrust and Competition

Reclaiming The Antitrust Law Of Potential Competition Mergers

In order to discuss the Meta/Within merger decision, it is important to understand the legal underpinnings and history of competition merger cases.

Antitrust and Competition

Can The Robinson-Patman Act Be Salvaged?

Adding to ProMarket’s discussion of the Robinson-Patman Act, Herbert Hovenkamp argues that – among other issues– the law was captured by special...

Antitrust and Competition

When Rhetoric Confronts Economic Reality: Unsupported Efficiency Claims and Unenforceable Promises Cannot Save the Book Publishers Deal

In trying to get their merger approved, Penguin and Simon & Schuster claimed massive, but unverified cost savings. They also have promised...

Antitrust and Competition

The Corruption of Consumer Welfare

The consumer welfare standard is used in modern antitrust enforcement to evaluate a merger between two firms. However, its original definition was...

Antitrust and Competition

Are Monopolists or Cartels the True Source of Anticompetitive US Political Power?

Trade associations are often the biggest obstacles to competitive markets, especially when those organizations use their influence to change public policy in...

Antitrust and Competition

A Posner-Stigler Smoking Gun?

A memo from George Stigler and Richard Posner to the Reagan administration was recently unearthed. To understand the meaning behind the memo,...

Antitrust and Competition

The Sherman Act and Abuse of Dominance in the Age of Networks

In order to be more effective in networked markets, the US should adopt a version of the EU’s “abuse of dominance” standard...

Antitrust and Competition

Antitrust and the FTC: Franchise Restraints on Worker Mobility

As currently formulated, antitrust’s rule of reason approach is not the best tool to deal with vertical noncompete agreements that limit worker...

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Antitrust and Competition

The Whig History of the Merger Guidelines

Eric A. Posner

A pervasive "Whig" view of United States antitrust history among scholars and practitioners celebrates the Merger Guidelines' implementation of increasingly sophisticated economic methods since their...

Antitrust and Competition

Algorithmic Collusion in the Housing Market

Gabriele Bortolotti

While the development of artificial intelligence has led to efficient business strategies, such as dynamic pricing, this new technology is vulnerable to collusion and consumer harm when companies share the same software through a central platform. Gabriele Bortolotti highlights the importance of antitrust enforcement in this domain for the second article in our series, using as a case study the RealPage class action lawsuit in the Seattle housing market.

Antitrust and Competition

The Future Markets Model Explains Meta/Within: A Reply to Herb Hovenkamp

Lawrence B. Landman

In response to both Herb Hovenkamp’s February 27 article in ProMarket and, perhaps more importantly, also to Hovenkamp’s highly regarded treatise, Lawrence B. Landman, first, shows that the Future Markets Model explains the court’s decision in Meta/Within. Since Meta was not even trying to make a future product, the court correctly found that Meta would not enter the Future Market. Second, the Future Markets Model is the analytical tool which Hovenkamp says the enforcers lack when they try to protect competition to innovate.

Book Excerpts

The Chicago Boys and the Chilean Neoliberal Project

Sebastian Edwards

In a new book, The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism, Sebastian Edwards details the history of neoliberalism in Chile over the past seventy years. The Chicago Boys—a group of Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago through the U.S. State Department’s “Chile Project”—played a central role in neoliberalism’s ascent during General Augusto Pinochet’s rule. What follows is an excerpt from the book on University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman’s 1975 visit to Chile to meet with Pinochet and business leaders.

Antitrust and Competition

Creating a Modern Antitrust Welfare Standard that Integrates Post-Chicago and Neo-Brandeisian Goals

Darren Bush, Mark Glick, Gabriel A. Lozada

Darren Bush, Mark Glick, and Gabriel A. Lozada argue that the Consumer Welfare Standard is inconsistent with modern welfare economics and that a modern approach to antitrust could integrate traditional Congressional goals as advocated by the Neo-Brandesians. Such an approach could be the basis for an alliance between the post-Chicago economists and the Neo-Brandesians.

Democracy

Getting Partisans To Listen to One Another Can Reduce Political Polarization

Guglielmo Briscese, Michèle Belot

In new research, Guglielmo Briscese and Michèle Belot find that reminding Americans of shared values can open lines of communication and help reduce political polarization.

Antitrust and Competition

The State of The Debate on U.S. Antitrust and Competition

Brooke Fox

This year’s Stigler Center conference on antitrust and competition invited scholars to propose alternatives to the consumer welfare standard.

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Herbert Hovenkamp

Latest news

The Whig History of the Merger Guidelines

Algorithmic Collusion in the Housing Market

The Future Markets Model Explains Meta/Within: A Reply to Herb Hovenkamp

The Chicago Boys and the Chilean Neoliberal Project

Creating a Modern Antitrust Welfare Standard that Integrates Post-Chicago and Neo-Brandeisian Goals

Getting Partisans To Listen to One Another Can Reduce Political Polarization

The State of The Debate on U.S. Antitrust and Competition

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