The Stigler Center is inviting submissions of short academic articles (up to 3000 words) focused on the development of a legal/economic standard that can serve as a replacement for, or an improvement of, the current Consumer Welfare Standard.
The authors of the best submissions will have their work published on ProMarket and will be invited to present and discuss their ideas at the Stigler Center’s 2023 Antitrust and Competition Conference, which will take place in Chicago on April 20-21, 2023.
About the Conference
In 2017, the Stigler Center embarked on an ambitious project to reinvigorate the discussion of concentration and monopoly in the United States, starting with the conference Is There a Concentration Problem in America?. Five years later, our 2022 Conference Antitrust: What’s Next? discussed whether the field of competition policy reached an inflection point—both in academia and in policy—that may lead to once-in-a-generation changes.
One of our most engaging panels discussed What is the Future of the Consumer Welfare Standard? The main question was whether antitrust scholars and policymakers can develop an alternative but still administrable standard to guide U.S. antitrust policy in this new enforcement era. While there was a general agreement (on the panel and at the conference) that change is needed, there was little convergence on what an alternative standard—one that can be properly and coherently enforced by regulators and judges—may look like. Yet, any attempt to reinvigorate antitrust enforcement must move this conversation forward. This will be one of the main topics of our 2023 Antitrust and Competition Conference, and we are engaging the broader antitrust community in this important conversation.
In particular: We are looking for short contributions (up to 3000 words) that clearly articulate what should be the legal and/or economic standard that guides the modern enforcement of U.S. antitrust policy. The authors of the best submissions will be invited to present and discuss their proposal at our 2023 Conference, which will take place in Chicago on April 20-21, 2023. We will also post the best submissions on ProMarket.
We welcome submissions from all sides of the current antitrust debate—from conservatives to reformers to neo-Brandeisians, and from lawyers to economists (and all others). We also welcome contributions from non-U.S. scholars who can share valuable experience on how antitrust policy is enforced in an administrable manner in other jurisdictions. Authors should feel free to submit pieces based on longer articles that have been published elsewhere.
We encourage all those considering contributions to watch our 2022 panel on this topic, as it provides valuable information on the many challenges present in this exercise. In particular, authors should keep in mind that the standard will be enforced by regulators and judges, so contributions should at least outline the types of evidence that can help parties meet burdens of proof in litigation.
Deadline
Please submit your contributions by January 15, 2023 (11:59pm Chicago time) here.
Contact
Please direct any questions to Filippo Lancieri.
