Vertical Restraints and Collusion: Issues and Challenges
While cartels and vertical restraints have both been the object of intense scrutiny, research at the intersection of these two strands of the economics literature remains remarkably scarce.
Antitrust Law Journal
Volume 83, Issue 1
Symposium: Vertical Restraints and Collusion
How Do Cartels Use Vertical Restraints? Horizontal and Vertical Working in Tandem
The role of vertical relationships in facilitating collusion is often obscured. This paper provides a typology for classifying and understanding how vertical relationships can support horizontal coll…
Maximum Resale Price Maintenance and Retailer Cartel Profits: Evidence from the Indian Pharmaceutical Industry
Vertical price restraints, such as maximum resale price maintenance, although considered welfare enhancing and per se not illegal under US jurisprudence, can sometimes facilitate horizontal collusion…
Vertical Restraints Imposed by Buyers: The Secrétan Copper Cartel, 1887-1889
This article discusses the formation and collapse of the Secrétan Syndicate and the role of vertical restraints in enabling the cartel to survive. It also takes a broader look at commodity market cor…
A Study of Exclusionary Coalitions: The Canadian Sugar Combination, 1887–1889
Exclusion may be accomplished by a coalition of firms–frequently, a coalition of suppliers and customers–that share the benefits of exclusion. The coalition is held together by an interlocking lattic…
Essays
The New Crisis in Antitrust (?)
The Chicago School's claims of a crisis of excessive antitrust enforcement in the 1960s may have been overstated. Similarly, contemporary claims of inadequate antitrust enforcement may also be overst…
Antitrust Law and Its Critics
Antitrust law is the subject of substantial current controversy, criticism, and purposed reform but the thinking thus far has taken place in two separate conversations: one between conservatives and…
Articles
Inferring Agreement in Hub-and-Spoke Conspiracies
The circumstantial evidence a court may properly use to infer a horizontal agreement among the spokes in a hub-and-spoke conspiracy is substantially more limited than the circumstantial evidence used…
The Antitrust Challenge to Covenants Not to Compete in Employment Contracts
Employee convenants not to compete, which bar workers who leave their jobs from working for a competing employer for a period of time, should be subject to heightened antitrust enforcement.
Common Ownership and Coordinated Effects
In particular factual contexts, shareholders (common and non-common) can behave in ways that cause the firms in which they have an ownership interest to act anticompetitively.