The Life of Antitrust's Consumer Welfare Model
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-10-2023
Abstract
“Consumer welfare” as an objective of antitrust law and regulation has its origins in several vague and even conflicting ideas of how to evaluate the impact of market consolidation. However, many of these ideas identify consumer welfare with higher market output and lower prices. Herbert Hovenkamp and Fiona Scott Morton argue that this definition of consumer welfare provides courts and antitrust regulators with a metric to judge the potential harmful effects of mergers and acquisitions that is superior to other antitrust goals, including protecting the “competitive process” and limiting firm “bigness.” The Stigler Center’s 2023 Antitrust and Competition conference seeks to answer the question: what lays beyond the consumer welfare standard? In advance of the discussions, ProMarket is publishing a series of papers on the infamous consumer welfare standard. This piece is part of that debate
Keywords
Consumer welfare, antitrust, trade regulation
Publication Title
ProMarket
Repository Citation
Hovenkamp, Herbert J. and Scott Morton, Fiona, "The Life of Antitrust's Consumer Welfare Model" (2023). All Faculty Scholarship. 2935.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/2935