Antitrust and Inequality: The History of (In)Equality in Competition Law and Its Guide to the Future
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Description
The inequality of wealth and income is increasing at a frightening pace across much of the world. At the same time, researchers are documenting increasing market power of large corporate players in concentrated markets. Market power may produce higher prices, less choice, less innovation, blocked opportunities, and lower wages. Studies link inequality of wealth and income with antitrust—the body of law charged with control of market power. Is antitrust (also called ‘competition law’) a cause of inequality of wealth and income? Is it a cure? Many scholars and policymakers answer yes to both questions. They typically recommend more aggressive antitrust, more funding of the antitrust agencies, prioritisation of cases that could principally help the middle- and lower-income population, and exemptions from antitrust for smaller market players. A separate body of scholarship questions whether antitrust has caused or could remedy inequality. There is a gap in the literature. No one has previously written the history of equality/inequality in antitrust: how has equality as a value been received into, or rejected by, antitrust? Is it a sympathetic or foreign element? How the value has been used in the past and is being used today can illuminate how it might be used in the future. It can clarify the receptivity, or not, of the antitrust ecosystem to equality. This chapter helps to fill the gap. The chapter offers four country studies. The countries (or jurisdictions) were selected to illustrate the full range of approaches from antagonism to equality as relevant to antitrust to equality as a raison d’être of antitrust. The country studies become a laboratory for drawing recommendations and conclusions. To give context to the country studies, this chapter briefly reviews the main points and claims in the literature on antitrust and inequality. It observes the multifaceted nature of the problem, including some difficulties in using antitrust to address the wealth/income gaps. After the country studies, the chapter synthesises the results, considers how equality can be integrated into antitrust in view of how it has been integrated in the past, and ends with recommendations and conclusions. The chapter takes as a starting point the premises that inequality of wealth and income without significant mobility is rising dramatically, and that extreme and growing inequality without mobility threatens the legitimacy of the socio-economic fabric, undermining democracy and causing instability within nations and in the world.
Source Publication
Competition Law and Economic Inequality
Source Editors/Authors
Jan Broulík, Katalin Cseres
Publication Date
2022
Recommended Citation
Fox, Eleanor M. and Baschenhof, Philipp, "Antitrust and Inequality: The History of (In)Equality in Competition Law and Its Guide to the Future" (2022). Faculty Chapters. 1206.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1206
