Antitrust’s Most Wanted
We live in a time of both extreme politics and extreme economics. The political side is familiar, but the economic side may be less so. It is represented by new concentrations of personal wealth and unprecedented levels of industrial concentration, both in the United States and globally. That means that an increasing number of industries are dominated by oligopolies and monopolies, with repercussions felt in terms of higher prices, poor treatment of consumers, barriers for entrepreneurs, and suppressed wages for employees.
In the United States, the classic antidote to such excessive concentration has been the antitrust law, enacted during the first Gilded Age to fight the monopolization of the American economy by the trusts. Yet it is a law whose enforcement has weakened over the last 40 years, prompting many to ask if the law has failed in its prime directive. These are the questions asked in my new book, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age.
But if antitrust is due for a revival, just what should the antitrust law be doing? What are its most obvious targets? Compiled here, and based on discussions with other antitrust experts, is a collection of the law’s most wanted — the firms or industries that are ripe for investigation.
