Book Reviews

• DOI: 10.1177/0003603X7702200117
• Published date: 01 March 1977
• Date: 01 March 1977
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

James A. Dalton, Stanford L. Levin, The Antitrust Dilemma,

Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, D. C. Heath and Co.

(1974), 196 pp.

In April, 1973 a Conference in Industrial Organization was

held

at

Southern Illinois University. Papers were invited from

a number of leading economists who were asked to focus on

"some aspect of policy planning in antitrust." Also, discussants

were invited for each of the papers. This book, edited by the

arrangers of the Conference, emerged. The book deals with

important

and timely topics; "approaches to plan-

ning and evaluating antitrust policy," "the implementation of

policy," and "the remedies and penalties thereof." These very

practical antitrust problems are not commonly addressed in

journal articles and books, and for this reason, if no other,

this volume is a welcome addition to modern antitrust

literature.

With one exception (the piece by Leonard Weiss), the

papers included in this book are "think pieces," based on

authors' exposure to antitrust literature and practice, rather

than

reports of researches conducted by the authors.

As is to be expected in a volume consisting of papers by

different authors who were not assigned precise topics, this

book is somewhat disjointed and must be read as a group of

papers in the same general subject area, but distinct in their

coverage and approach.

James Dalton and Stanford Levin, the editors, author the

introductory chapter which is an attempt to set the stage for

what's to come. They go through

the

familiar exercise of

demonstrating the deadweight welfare loss stemming from

monopoly and reviewing the attempts to measure it by

economists such as Harberger, Swartzman, and Kamershen. In

addition to the "price effect" of monopoly power they examine

the "cost effect" stemming from the presence of some ineffi-

cient firms and the lack of pressure to cut costs to a minimum

by imperfectly competitive firms, capitalization of monopoly

gains, and the costs expended to protect economic profits.

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