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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

What Antitrust Experts Want You to Know About the Amazon Trial

In late September, the United States Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon for using a set of anticompetitive strategies to maintain its monopoly in the online retail market. ProMarket asked four antitrust experts —two economists and two law professors —to discuss the foundations and strength of the complaint’s arguments, the history of similar cases, and the potential for a legal remedy.
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Antitrust and Competition

Fixing Platform Monopoly in the Google Search Case

Google is on trial for anticompetitive behaviors designed to protect its monopoly in internet search. Herb Hovenkamp analyzes several possible remedies the presiding court and Department of Justice could pursue and suggests which ones may succeed in reinforcing competition to protect consumer interests.
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Antitrust and Competition

Herbert Hovenkamp: Distinguishing Harms from Benefits in the 2023 Merger Guidelines

Herb Hovenkamp provides his round-two comments on the draft Merger Guidelines.
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Antitrust and Competition

Herbert Hovenkamp: Competitive Harm and the 2023 Draft Merger Guidelines

Herbert Hovenkamp provides his round-one comments on the draft Merger Guidelines.
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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...
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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...
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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.
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Income Inequality

Uninhibited Campaign Donations Risks Creating Oligarchy

Valentino Larcinese, Alberto Parmigiani
In new research, Valentino Larcinese and Alberto Parmigiani find that the 1986 Reagan tax cuts led to greater campaign spending from wealthy individuals, who benefited the most from this policy. The authors argue that a very permissive system of political finance, combined with the erosion of tax progressivity, created the conditions for the mutual reinforcement of economic and political disparities. The result was an inequality spiral hardly compatible with democratic ideals.
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ESG, Corporate Governance & Future of the Firm

Did the Meme Stock Revolution Actually Change Anything?

Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, Alex Lee
Many financial commentators thought that the surge of retail investors participating in the stock market, the most notable of whom boosted “meme stocks” like GameStop, would democratize corporate governance and improve prosocial firm behavior, including the promotion of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. In new research, Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, and Yoon-Ho Alex Lee find evidence that the exact opposite took place.
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Antitrust and Competition

The Kroger-Albertsons Merger Will Not Help Grocery Competition

Claire Kelloway
Kroger and Albertsons say they need to merge to compete with Walmart. Claire Kelloway argues that what they really want is Walmart’s monopsony power, and permitting mergers on these grounds will only harm suppliers, workers, and consumers.
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Research

Innovators Respond to Their Presidential Candidate Winning With More Innovation

Joseph Engelberg, Runjing Lu, William Mullins, Richard Townsend
Does an inventor’s political identity influence their productivity? In a new paper, Joseph Engelberg, Runjing Lu, William Mullins, and Richard Townsend examine the impacts of the 2008 and 2016 United States presidential elections on Democrat and Republican inventors, with a particular focus on the quantity and quality of patents after the country elects a new president.
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Antitrust and Competition

Letter to the Editor: Former FTC and DOJ Chief Economists Urge Separation of Economic and Legal Analysis in Merger Guidelines

Letter to the Editor
Seventeen former chief economists of the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice Antitrust Division urge current Agency heads to separate the legal and economic analysis in the draft Merger Guidelines to strengthen the role of the latter in merger review.
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Antitrust and Competition

Why the Kroger-Albertsons Merger Is a Mess for Consumers

Christine P. Bartholomew
Grocers Kroger and Albertsons want to merge, which would make them the second biggest retail food chain and, according to them, enhance their ability to compete with Walmart and Costco and offer lower prices to consumers. Christine P. Bartholomew writes that the promises of more competition and lower prices for consumers are unlikely to manifest, and thus the Federal Trade Commission should block the deal.  
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Book Excerpts

After Neoliberalism

Martin Daunton
The following is an excerpt from Martin Daunton's new book, "The Economic Government of the World: 1933-2023," out November 14.
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ProMarket is dedicated to discussing how competition tends to be subverted by special interests. The posts represent the opinions of their writers, not necessarily those of the University of Chicago, the Booth School of Business, or its faculty. For more information, please visit ProMarket Policy.

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