Monopoly and Antitrust Policy (Economics)

Recall cards on how governments limit market power. Corporate mergers: vertical, conglomerate, and horizontal combinations, acquisitions, FTC notification thresholds, and the Sherman, Clayton, and Celler-Kefauver antitrust laws. Measuring concentration: the four-firm concentration ratio and the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), and why regulators now favor detailed market analysis. Regulating anticompetitive behavior: price fixing, bid rigging, market division, restrictive practices such as exclusive dealing, tie-in sales, bundling, and predatory pricing, with the vitamin and Microsoft cases. Regulating natural monopolies: cost-plus versus price cap regulation and marginal-cost pricing losses. The great deregulation experiment: regulatory capture and the airline case.