By Sandeep Vaheesan
In the past few years, mainstream antitrust practitioners and scholars have been rudely awakened from their technocratic slumber and forced to accept that their field is unavoidably political. The objective of antitrust—for too long uncontested and accepted by all serious voices as “consumer welfare”—is up for debate again. Yet, some bipartisan beliefs remain unquestioned. A good example is the shared hostility to the anti-merger policy of the 1960s. The strict limits on corporate consolidation in that era are disparaged for supposedly limiting “efficiency-enhancing” mergers and thereby hurting consumers. For example, even as they disagree on many antitrust issues, Joshua Wright on the reactionary right, Herbert Hovenkamp in the establishment center, and Tim Wu on the neo-Brandeisian left are critical of mid-twentieth century rules on corporate mergers. [Read more…] about Two-and-a-Half Cheers for 1960s Merger Policy