An Essay on Diamonds, Trust, and Antitrust, Inspired by Barak D. Richman’s Stateless Commerce

• DOI: 10.1177/0003603X18822578
• Date: 01 March 2019
• Published date: 01 March 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

An Essay on Diamonds, Trust,

and Antitrust, Inspired by

Barak D. Richman’s Stateless

Commerce

Albert Allen Foer*

Abstract

The author combines his antitrust background and his experience as a CEO in the jewelry industry to

consider Barak Richman’s book, Stateless Commerce, with its detailed description of the role of trust

and reputation in the global diamond industry. Richman argues for rule of reason treatment to certain

kinds of boycotts that reflect more efficient cooperative institutions made necessary by what he

describes as “court failures.” This article adds a retail perspective to an analysis based on earlier stages

of the supply chain and further explores the relationship between trust and industry structure.

Keywords

competition, cooperation, trust, vertical integration, monopoly, supply chain, arbitration, group

boycott, rule of reason

I. Introduction

Warning: I bring to this article, inspired by Barak Richman’s recent book on the diamond industry as

an example of “stateless commerce,”

1

not only a professional career in the antitrust field but thirteen

years of full-time employment in the diamond industry. Barak Richman, a personal friend, advisor to

the American Antitrust Institute, and a professor of law and business administration at Duke University

School of Law, has written a compelling account of the diamond network as an example of an industry

where successful self-regulation has for a long period flourished, obviating the need for many of the

state’s commercial laws and courts. Richman describes the cultural and economic conditions for a

particular manifestation of commerce as exemplified by this tradition, whose dynamics are exposed by

major changes that have occurred in the years since I rather joyfully departed the industry in 1995. The

underlying question is how antitrust enforcement should look upon such industries.

*Senior Fellow of the American Antitrust Institute, Washington, D.C, USA

Corresponding Author:

Albert Allen Foer, Senior Fellow of the American Antitrust Institute, 2919 Ellicott Street Washington, D.C, USA.

Email: bert.foer@gmail.com

1. BARAK D. RICHMAN,STATELESS COMMERCE:THE DIAMOND NETWORK AND THE PERSISTENCE OF RELATIONAL EXCHANGE (2017).

The Antitrust Bulletin

2019, Vol. 64(1) 105-114

ªThe Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/0003603X18822578

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