Neo-Brandeisians

Tim Brennan finds the new shift in antitrust thought and enforcement connected to the Neo-Brandeisian movement to be flawed for the most part. However, he writes that a reinvigorated focus on tacit collusion, which some have blamed on the rise of prices for groceries and apartment rents, may deserve consideration and further study.

Eleanor Fox writes that the paradigm shift in United States antitrust is not best understood as an embrace of neo-Brandeisian anti-bigness ideas but rather a rejection of neoliberal principles that have prevented effective antitrust regulation for decades. The shift encompasses the concerns and efforts of centrists, progressives, and neo-Brandeisians.

John W. Mayo reviews whether or not the articulated principles and priorities of the Neo-Brandeisian movement in antitrust scholarship and enforcement represent a “paradigm shift,” per the philosophy of Thomas Kuhn. Mayo finds that the Neo-Brandeisian discourse is best understood as situated within the continuum of the current antitrust paradigm, and that many of its efforts to substantiate its distinctive ideas have failed to properly ground them in empiricism or repudiate existing studies.

Kevin Frazier writes that the Neo-Brandeisian movement’s focus on bigness as a harm to society in itself neglects the true focus of antitrust policy—protection of individual liberty, as envisioned by Thomas Jefferson. He argues that a Neo-Jeffersonian approach would clarify antitrust’s goals and produce more appropriate government intervention in markets.

Although the antimonopoly neo-Brandeisians and the labor movement share many goals, including a desire to reduce the power of big business, significant tensions exist, such as labor’s past support for mergers when they advance the ability of workers to unionize. Kate Andrias traces the history of labor’s relation with antitrust to show that, despite historical and contemporary tensions, there have also been deep connections between the two movements that show how they can better complement each other in the future.

In new research, Manuel Wörsdörfer compares the philosophies of two formative antitrust thinkers writing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States and Europe: Louis D. Brandeis and Walter Eucken. A discussion of their body of thought highlights the antitrust concerns of the time and how their positions can be adapted to today’s regulatory environment, particularly regarding Big Tech.

In new research, Nolan McCarty and Sepehr Shahshahani find that, contrary to the concerns of Neo-Brandeisians, Market et power does not correlate with political power via outsized lobbying.

Some progressive politicians and advocates have argued that lax antitrust policies enabled the inflation surge that began in 2021 and that aggressive antitrust enforcement is crucial to combatting inflation. These assertions are misguided and misleading. Similar greedflation theories emerged during previous inflation spikes, but their promotion this time has proven counterproductive. The allure of trustbusting ideas, it seems, is starting to wane.

Darren Bush, Mark Glick, and Gabriel A. Lozada argue that the Consumer Welfare Standard  is inconsistent with modern welfare economics and that a modern approach to antitrust could integrate traditional Congressional goals as advocated by the Neo-Brandesians. Such an approach could be the basis for an alliance between the post-Chicago economists and the Neo-Brandesians.

In their research, published in History of Economic Ideas, Thierry Kirat and Frédéric Marty stress the importance of the late 1930s in the making of antitrust. The moment was exceptional for its consensus within the economic discipline and the implementation of voluntarist public enforcement, particularly under Thurman Arnold according to the prescriptions of the Second Chicago School, institutionalists, and the preferences of the Neo-Brandeis movement.