The Futures of Antitrust

Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society by Eric A Posner and E Glen Weyl

Abstract

Recent developments in American antitrust scholarship anticipate two broad responses to the advent of ‘big tech’; namely, a return to the ‘structure, conduct and performance’ analyses of market power characteristic of the mid-century Harvard School, and a newly uncompromising application of the Chicago School’s emphasis on price-based consumer welfare and allocative efficiency. In Australia, as in the United States, both responses have antecedents in extant competition law and policy and each is broadly conceivable as a response to concerns about stalled reforms and stagnant productivity growth. This essay examines each incipient response to the rise of the ‘tech titans’ and explores the futures each response anticipates for Australian competition law and policy.