The Antitrust Revolution: Charting the Course of Antitrust Enforcement

Abstract

The seven volumes of The Antitrust Revolution published between 1989 and 2019 include dozens of excellent articles that describe topical antitrust cases and the circumstances that motivated them. Taken together, the volumes provide invaluable insights into the course of antitrust enforcement over more than three decades and the factors that influenced the direction of change. This essay follows the course described in the pages of The Antitrust Revolution for two major components of antitrust enforcement: mergers and vertical restraints. The cases demonstrate that economic analysis profoundly impacted merger decisions, although the trajectory has been anything but linear. The revolution was more dramatic for the treatment of vertical price and nonprice restraints of trade. Courts relied on economic principles to upset decades of legal precedent for these arrangements.