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ANTITRUST AND INEQUALITY

ANTITRUST AND INEQUALITY AMERICAN JOURNAL OF LAW AND EQUALITY | ISSUE 2 | 2022 AMERICAN JOURNAL of LAW and EQUALITY Eric A. Posner* and Cass R. Sunstein** In its current form, antitrust law is sometimes said to advance consumer welfare and to dis- regard economic inequality. In fact, because monopoly and monopsony benefitshare- holders at the expense of workers and consumers antitrust law redistributes resources from (generally wealthier) shareholders to (generally less wealthy) workers and consumers. Antitrust enforcement agencies seeking to reduce inequality might adjust their priorities and target markets that are disproportionately important for low-income people. Agriculture and health care would be good places to start; food and medicine compose a larger share of the budget of low-income people than of others, and these goods are essential to basic well-being. Regulators should also give priority to labor markets, especially labor markets in which lower-income people participate, and especially where pay gaps based on race or gender are large. In some cases, it is also appropriate to consider sacrificing economic efficiency for distributional goals by introducing distributional weights into antitrust analysis; doing so can increase social welfare. At the same time, antitrust law’s contribution to reducing inequality is subject to substantial diminishing http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png American Journal of Law and Equality MIT Press

ANTITRUST AND INEQUALITY

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Publisher
MIT Press
Copyright
© 2022 Eric A. Posner and Cass R. Sunstein. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND).
eISSN
2694-5711
DOI
10.1162/ajle_a_00041
Publisher site
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Abstract

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF LAW AND EQUALITY | ISSUE 2 | 2022 AMERICAN JOURNAL of LAW and EQUALITY Eric A. Posner* and Cass R. Sunstein** In its current form, antitrust law is sometimes said to advance consumer welfare and to dis- regard economic inequality. In fact, because monopoly and monopsony benefitshare- holders at the expense of workers and consumers antitrust law redistributes resources from (generally wealthier) shareholders to (generally less wealthy) workers and consumers. Antitrust enforcement agencies seeking to reduce inequality might adjust their priorities and target markets that are disproportionately important for low-income people. Agriculture and health care would be good places to start; food and medicine compose a larger share of the budget of low-income people than of others, and these goods are essential to basic well-being. Regulators should also give priority to labor markets, especially labor markets in which lower-income people participate, and especially where pay gaps based on race or gender are large. In some cases, it is also appropriate to consider sacrificing economic efficiency for distributional goals by introducing distributional weights into antitrust analysis; doing so can increase social welfare. At the same time, antitrust law’s contribution to reducing inequality is subject to substantial diminishing

Journal

American Journal of Law and Equality – MIT Press

Published: Aug 15, 2022

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