front cover of The Antitrust Enterprise
The Antitrust Enterprise
Principle and Execution
Herbert Hovenkamp
Harvard University Press, 2008

After thirty years, the debate over antitrust's ideology has quieted. Most now agree that the protection of consumer welfare should be the only goal of antitrust laws. Execution, however, is another matter. The rules of antitrust remain unfocused, insufficiently precise, and excessively complex. The problem of poorly designed rules is severe, because in the short run rules weigh much more heavily than principles. At bottom, antitrust is a defensible enterprise only if it can make the microeconomy work better, after accounting for the considerable costs of operating the system.

The Antitrust Enterprise is the first authoritative and compact exposition of antitrust law since Robert Bork's classic The Antitrust Paradox was published more than thirty years ago. It confronts not only the problems of poorly designed, overly complex, and inconsistent antitrust rules but also the current disarray of antitrust's rule of reason, offering a coherent and workable set of solutions. The result is an antitrust policy that is faithful to the consumer welfare principle but that is also more readily manageable by the federal courts and other antitrust tribunals.

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Antitrust Law in the New Economy
Google, Yelp, LIBOR, and the Control of Information
Mark R. Patterson
Harvard University Press, 2017

Markets run on information. Buyers make decisions by relying on their knowledge of the products available, and sellers decide what to produce based on their understanding of what buyers want. But the distribution of market information has changed, as consumers increasingly turn to sources that act as intermediaries for information—companies like Yelp and Google. Antitrust Law in the New Economy considers a wide range of problems that arise around one aspect of information in the marketplace: its quality.

Sellers now have the ability and motivation to distort the truth about their products when they make data available to intermediaries. And intermediaries, in turn, have their own incentives to skew the facts they provide to buyers, both to benefit advertisers and to gain advantages over their competition. Consumer protection law is poorly suited for these problems in the information economy. Antitrust law, designed to regulate powerful firms and prevent collusion among producers, is a better choice. But the current application of antitrust law pays little attention to information quality.

Mark Patterson discusses a range of ways in which data can be manipulated for competitive advantage and exploitation of consumers (as happened in the LIBOR scandal), and he considers novel issues like “confusopoly” and sellers’ use of consumers’ personal information in direct selling. Antitrust law can and should be adapted for the information economy, Patterson argues, and he shows how courts can apply antitrust to address today’s problems.

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Democracy Declined
The Failed Politics of Consumer Financial Protection
Mallory E. SoRelle
University of Chicago Press, 2020
As Elizabeth Warren memorably wrote, “It is impossible to buy a toaster that has a one-in-five chance of bursting into flames and burning down your house. But it is possible to refinance an existing home with a mortgage that has the same one-in-five chance of putting the family out on the street.” More than a century after the government embraced credit to fuel the American economy, consumer financial protections in the increasingly complex financial system still place the onus on individuals to sift through fine print for assurance that they are not vulnerable to predatory lending and other pitfalls of consumer financing and growing debt.
In Democracy Declined, Mallory E. SoRelle argues that the failure of federal policy makers to curb risky practices can be explained by the evolution of consumer finance policies aimed at encouraging easy credit in part by foregoing more stringent regulation. Furthermore, SoRelle explains how angry borrowers’ experiences with these policies teach them to focus their attention primarily on banks and lenders instead of demanding that lawmakers address predatory behavior. As a result, advocacy groups have been mostly unsuccessful in mobilizing borrowers in support of stronger consumer financial protections. The absence of safeguards on consumer financing is particularly dangerous because the consequences extend well beyond harm to individuals—they threaten the stability of entire economies. SoRelle identifies pathways to mitigate these potentially disastrous consequences through greater public participation.
 
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Learning about Risk
Consumer and Worker Responses to Hazard Information
W. Kip Viscusi and Wesley A. Magat
Harvard University Press, 1987

How do people decide whether or not to take chances with their health and safety? Do they pay attention to warnings about hazardous products used at home or on the job? What is the best way to present this information? These questions are becoming increasingly important as direct government regulation is replaced by programs to educate workers and consumers about risk. Information itself is becoming a regulatory device, but until now little has been known about its use and effectiveness.

Learning about Risk offers important new evidence on how people process information about risk and how they make choices under uncertainty. Drawing on work in a variety of disciplines—economics, decision science, marketing, and psychology—as well as on extensive original survey data, the authors take a close look at one type of risk information: the labeling of hazardous products and chemicals. They use the word labeling to mean all the tangible ways in which information is transmitted, including not merely warnings on bottles and cans but also leaflets and brochures, signs in the workplace, and store displays. The authors surveyed hundreds of consumers and chemical workers to explore a range of issues—the accuracy and appropriateness of people's risk assessments, the types of precautions they take, the values they attach to these measures, the wages they expect for performing risky jobs, and the relationship between the precaution taken and the content, wording, and format of the warning.

Overall, the authors show that information policies are a promising approach to controlling risks in the marketplace and on the job. Their findings will be of interest to government officials, policy analysts, economists, psychologists, and managers concerned professionally with the labeling of hazardous products.

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front cover of The People's Agents and the Battle to Protect the American Public
The People's Agents and the Battle to Protect the American Public
Special Interests, Government, and Threats to Health, Safety, and the Environment
Rena Steinzor and Sidney Shapiro
University of Chicago Press, 2010

Reasonable people disagree about the reach of the federal government, but there is near-universal consensus that it should protect us from such dangers as bacteria-infested food, harmful drugs, toxic pollution, crumbling bridges, and unsafe toys. And yet, the agencies that shoulder these responsibilities are in shambles; if they continue to decline, lives will be lost and natural resources will be squandered. In this timely book, Rena Steinzor and Sidney Shapiro take a hard look at the tangled web of problems that have led to this dire state of affairs.

It turns out that the agencies are not primarily to blame and that regulatory failure actually stems from a host of overlooked causes. Steinzor and Shapiro discover that unrelenting funding cuts, a breakdown of the legislative process, an increase in the number of political appointees, a concurrent loss of experienced personnel, chaotic White House oversight, and ceaseless political attacks on the bureaucracy all have contributed to the broken system. But while the news is troubling, the authors also propose a host of reforms, including a new model for measuring the success of the agencies and a revitalization of the civil service. The People’s Agents and the Battle to Protect the American Public is an urgent and compelling appeal to renew America’s best traditions of public service.

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Processed Foods and the Consumer
Additives, Labeling, Standards, and Nutrition
Vernal S. Packard Jr.
University of Minnesota Press, 1976

Processed Foods and the Consumer was first published in 1976. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

In this comprehensive guide, Professor Packard discusses problems and answers questions of paramount importance to the consumer concerning processed foods that are sold in the marketplace. The book is an excellent text for course use in classes in food science or technology, nutrition, dietetics, institutional food management, and related courses. It is also a valuable reference work for those in food industries and regulatory and health agencies, and for the concerned public.

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Suing the Gun Industry
A Battle at the Crossroads of Gun Control and Mass Torts
Timothy D. Lytton
University of Michigan Press, 2005
"Mass tort litigation against the gun industry, with its practical weaknesses, successes, and goals, provides the framework for this collection of thoughtful essays by leading social scientists, lawyers, and academics. . . . These informed analyses reveal the complexities that make the debate so difficult to resolve. . . . Suing the Gun Industry masterfully reveals the many details contributing to the intractability of the gun debate."
-New York Law Journal

"Second Amendment advocate or gun-control fanatic, all Americans who care about freedom need to read Suing the Gun Industry."
-Bob Barr, Member of Congress, 1995-2003, and Twenty-First Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy, American Conservative Union

"The source for anyone interested in a balanced analysis of the lawsuits against the gun industry."
-David Hemenway, Professor of Health Policy & Director, Harvard Injury Control Research Center Harvard School of Public Health Health Policy and Management Department, author of Private Guns, Public Health

"Highly readable, comprehensive, well-balanced. It contains everything you need to know, and on all sides, about the wave of lawsuits against U.S. gun manufacturers."
-James B. Jacobs, Warren E. Burger Professor of Law and author of Can Gun Control Work?

"In Suing the Gun Industry, Timothy Lytton has assembled some of the leading scholars and advocates, both pro and con, to analyze this fascinating effort to circumvent the well-known political obstacles to more effective gun control. This fine book offers a briefing on both the substance and the legal process of this wave of lawsuits, together with a better understanding of the future prospects for this type of litigation vis-à-vis other industries."
-Philip J. Cook, Duke University

"An interesting collection, generally representing the center of the gun-control debate, with considerable variation in focus, objectivity, and political realism."
-Paul Blackman, retired pro-gun criminologist and advocate

Gun litigation deserves a closer look amid the lessons learned from decades of legal action against the makers of asbestos, Agent Orange, silicone breast implants, and tobacco products, among others.

Suing the Gun Industry collects the diverse and often conflicting opinions of an outstanding cast of specialists in law, public health, public policy, and criminology and distills them into a complete picture of the intricacies of gun litigation and its repercussions for gun control.

Using multiple perspectives, Suing the Gun Industry scrutinizes legal action against the gun industry. Such a broad approach highlights the role of this litigation within two larger controversies: one over government efforts to reduce gun violence, and the other over the use of mass torts to regulate unpopular industries.

Readers will find Suing the Gun Industry a timely and accessible picture of these complex and controversial issues.


Contributors:
Tom Baker
Donald Braman
Brannon P. Denning
Tom Diaz
Howard M. Erichson
Thomas O. Farrish
Shannon Frattaroli
John Gastil
Dan M. Kahan
Don B. Kates
Timothy D. Lytton
Julie Samia Mair
Richard A. Nagareda
Peter H. Schuck
Stephen D. Sugarman
Stephen Teret
Wendy Wagner
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Trading Up
Consumer and Environmental Regulation in a Global Economy
David Vogel
Harvard University Press, 1995

Health, safety, and environmental regulations have been traditionally perceived as distinct entities from trade policy, yet today they have become intertwined on a global scale. In this pioneering work, David Vogel integrates environmental, consumer, and trade policy, and explicitly challenges the conventional wisdom that trade liberalization and agreements to promote free trade invariably undermine national health, safety, and environmental standards. Vogel demonstrates that liberal trade policies often produce precisely the opposite effect: that of strengthening regulatory standards.

The most comprehensive account of trade and regulation on a global scale, this book analyzes the regulatory dimensions of all major international and regional trade agreements and treaties, including GATT, NAFTA, the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United States, and the treaties that created the European Community and Union. He explores in depth some of the most important trade and regulatory conflicts, including the GATT tuna-dolphin dispute, the EC's beef hormone ban, the Danish bottle case, and the debate in the United States over the regulatory implications of both NAFTA and GATT.

This timely book unravels the increasingly important and contentious relationship between trade and environmental, health, and safety standards, paying particular attention to the politics that underlie trade and regulatory linkages. Trading Up is essential reading for the business community, policymakers, environmentalists, consumer interest groups, political scientists, lawyers, and economists.

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Virtual Competition
The Promise and Perils of the Algorithm-Driven Economy
Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice E. Stucke
Harvard University Press, 2016

“A fascinating book about how platform internet companies (Amazon, Facebook, and so on) are changing the norms of economic competition.”
Fast Company


Shoppers with a bargain-hunting impulse and internet access can find a universe of products at their fingertips. But is there a dark side to internet commerce? This thought-provoking exposé invites us to explore how sophisticated algorithms and data-crunching are changing the nature of market competition, and not always for the better. Introducing into the policy lexicon terms such as algorithmic collusion, behavioral discrimination, and super-platforms, Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice E. Stucke explore the resulting impact on competition, our democratic ideals, our wallets, and our well-being.

“We owe the authors our deep gratitude for anticipating and explaining the consequences of living in a world in which black boxes collude and leave no trails behind. They make it clear that in a world of big data and algorithmic pricing, consumers are outgunned and antitrust laws are outdated, especially in the United States.”
Science

“A convincing argument that there can be a darker side to the growth of digital commerce. The replacement of the invisible hand of competition by the digitized hand of internet commerce can give rise to anticompetitive behavior that the competition authorities are ill equipped to deal with.”
—Burton G. Malkiel, Wall Street Journal

“A convincing case for the need to rethink competition law to cope with algorithmic capitalism’s potential for malfeasance.”
—John Naughton, The Observer

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