Lande, Robert H. --- "Consumer Choice as the Best Way to Recenter the Mission of Competition Law" [2011] ELECD 742; in Drexl, Josef; Grimes, S. Warren; Jones, A. Clifford; Peritz, J.R. Rudolph; Swaine, T. Edward (eds), "More Common Ground for International Competition Law?" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: More Common Ground for International Competition Law?

Editor(s): Drexl, Josef; Grimes, S. Warren; Jones, A. Clifford; Peritz, J.R. Rudolph; Swaine, T. Edward

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849803946

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: Consumer Choice as the Best Way to Recenter the Mission of Competition Law

Author(s): Lande, Robert H.

Number of pages: 15

Extract:

2. Consumer choice as the best way to
recenter the mission of competition
law
Robert H. Lande*

1 INTRODUCTION

The mission of competition law needs to be clarified, and this article
shows that the best way to do this is to interpret and enforce these laws in
terms of consumer choice. This reformulation is necessary due to uncer-
tainty and instability that exist in the field. For example, even though the
United States' competition laws, which it calls antitrust laws, are more
than a century old, it can't decide upon these laws' overall purpose. The
`main point of antitrust' in the United States from 1890 to the 1970s was
a variety of social/political/economic objectives, including the belief that
big businesses were suspect and small businesses were good.1 Then the
efficiency-only paradigm emerged during the Reagan and Bush adminis-
trations.2 More recently, the Clinton Administration seemed to care about
enhancing economic efficiency and also about protecting consumers from


* This chapter is in large part a condensation and update of NW Averitt and
RH Lande, `Using the "Consumer Choice" Approach to Antitrust Law' (2007)
74 Antitrust LJ 175. I am grateful to Christine Carey, James Denvil and Gary
Stapleton for excellent research assistance.
1 RH Lande, `Wealth Transfers as the Original and Primary Concern of

Antitrust: The Efficiency Interpretation Challenged' (1982) 34 Hastings LJ 64, at 101­
105, available at http://papers.ssrn.com/so13/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1121459. See
also JB Kirkwood and RH Lande, ` ...