Herbert Hovenkamp

Herbert Hovenkamp is the James G. Dinan University Professor, Penn Law and the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2008 won the Justice Department’s John Sherman Award for lifetime contributions to antitrust law. His legal history writing includes The Opening of American Law: Neoclassical Legal Thought, 1870-1970 (Oxford, 2015); Enterprise and American Law, 1836-1937 (Harvard, 1991). His principal antitrust scholarship includes Antitrust Law (with the late Phillip E. Areeda and the late Donald F. Turner, 1978-2020).

Did the Supreme Court Fix “Brown Shoe”?

The Supreme Court’s 1962 Brown Shoe decision, which found a merger to be anticompetitive even though it would have reduced prices for consumers, remains...

The Life of Antitrust’s Consumer Welfare Model

“Consumer welfare” as an objective of antitrust law and regulation has its origins in several vague and even conflicting ideas of how to evaluate...

Reclaiming The Antitrust Law Of Potential Competition Mergers

In order to discuss the Meta/Within merger decision, it is important to understand the legal underpinnings and history of competition merger cases. Most mergers that...

Can The Robinson-Patman Act Be Salvaged?

Adding to ProMarket’s discussion of the Robinson-Patman Act, Herbert Hovenkamp argues that – among other issues– the law was captured by special interests when...

When Rhetoric Confronts Economic Reality: Unsupported Efficiency Claims and Unenforceable Promises Cannot Save the Book Publishers Deal

In trying to get their merger approved, Penguin and Simon & Schuster claimed massive, but unverified cost savings. They also have promised that their...

The Corruption of Consumer Welfare

The consumer welfare standard is used in modern antitrust enforcement to evaluate a merger between two firms. However, its original definition was corrupted in...

Are Monopolists or Cartels the True Source of Anticompetitive US Political Power?

Trade associations are often the biggest obstacles to competitive markets, especially when those organizations use their influence to change public policy in their favor. Dana...

A Posner-Stigler Smoking Gun?

A memo from George Stigler and Richard Posner to the Reagan administration was recently unearthed. To understand the meaning behind the memo, as well...

The Sherman Act and Abuse of Dominance in the Age of Networks

In order to be more effective in networked markets, the US should adopt a version of the EU’s “abuse of dominance” standard that could...

Antitrust and the FTC: Franchise Restraints on Worker Mobility

As currently formulated, antitrust’s rule of reason approach is not the best tool to deal with vertical noncompete agreements that limit worker mobility and...

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