Markovits on Defining Monopolization

• Author: Keith N. Hylton
• DOI: 10.1177/0003603X15625125
• Published date: 01 March 2016
• Date: 01 March 2016

Article

Markovits on Defining

Monopolization: A Comment

Keith N. Hylton*

Abstract

In this comment I focus on Richard Markovits’s definition of monopolization in his new book,

Economics and the Interpretation and Application of U.S. and E.U. Antitrust Law (Springer 2014), and also his

assertion that monopolization is distributively unjust. I agree wholeheartedly with his approach to

defining monopolization, though I might alter a few details. However, I think the distributive justice

effects of monopolization are ambiguous.

Keywords

monopolization, demand curve, distributive justice

Richard Markovits’s new book, Economics and the Interpretation and Application of U.S. and E.U.

Antitrust Law (Springer 2014), is far too long and intricate for me to review it fairly in the short space

of this comment, so I have taken only a small part for discussion. My comments relate to Chapter 3,

titled ‘‘How ‘Monopolizing Conduct,’ ‘Attempts to Monopolize,’ and ‘Exclusionary or Foreclosing

Conduct’ Should Be Defined by Economists.’’

Here is a quote from the chapter setting out Markovits’s definition of monopolization:

I start with the (Sherman Act) concept of monopolizing conduct. A seller is properly said to have committed

a monopolizing act (or to have engaged in a more general, monopolizing practice) if and only if its ex ante

perception of its choice’s profitability was ‘‘ceteris paribus critically inflated’’by its belief that the conduct

might benefit the seller by increasing the demand curve it would face in the future by reducing the absolute

attractiveness of the offers against which it would have to compete.

1

Elaborating, Markovits holds that

*Boston University, Boston, MA, USA; and Boston University School of Law, Boston, MA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Keith N. Hylton, Boston University School of Law, Boston, MA 02215, USA.

Email: knhylton@bu.edu

1. RICHARD S. MARKOVITS,ECONOMICS AND THE INTERPRETATION AND APPLICATION OF U.S. AND E.U. ANTITRUST LAW,BASIC CONCEPTS

AND ECONOMICS-BASED LEGAL ANALYSES OF OLIGOPOLISTIC AND PREDATORY CONDUCT 69 (2014).

The Antitrust Bulletin

2016, Vol. 61(1) 105-108

ªThe Author(s) 2016

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DOI: 10.1177/0003603X15625125

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