ECON 308 Chapter Notes -Resale Price Maintenance, Sherman Antitrust Act, Clayton Antitrust Act
19 Apr 2013
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Kovacic and shapiro: antitrust policy- a century of economic and legal thinking. *notes: horizontal agreement: agreement between competing businesses in same economic sphere; leads to price-fixing and limiting competition. Vertical agreement: agreement between firms at different levels of the supply chain. Among american statutes that regulate commerce, the sherman act is unequaled in its generality. The act outlawed every contract, combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade and monopolization and treated violations as crimes. By these open-ended commands, congress gave federal judges extraordinary power to draw lines between acceptable cooperation and illegal collusion, between vigorous competition and unlawful monopolization. Although the sherman act"s first two decades featured no whirlwind of antitrust enforcement, the courts began shaping the law"s vague terms. The act"s categorical ban on every contract in restraint of trade required judges to develop principles for distinguishing between collaboration that suppressed rivalry and cooperation that promoted growth.
