The Limits of Antitrust in the New Economy

The rise of industrial concentration throughout the US economy has brought antitrust policy to the center of public debate. In many different sectors, a small number of large businesses are increasingly dominant. An increasing popular view amongst both academics and policymakers holds that this is a problem, one that can be reversed in large part by more aggressive antitrust enforcement. The other side of this debate normally takes a benign view of the rise of big business. Here I outline a third, alternative position: that the rise of industrial concentration is a problem, but one that antitrust law will probably not be able to systematically address. Instead, we may have to look to policies that more deeply address the underlying causes of the growing technological distance between big and small business.

By Gabriel Unger¹

I. INTRODUCTION

Interest in antitrust law is cyclical. But the cycles stretch over many decades, to the point that a young practitioner or academic in, say, 2021, might not realize the extent to which debates over antitrust policy today so closely mirror debates that took place in the 1960s and 1970s. And sure enough, a historically familiar perspective has ascended in policy circles today: that a small number of big businesses have taken over a large amount of market share throughout the U.S. economy, and this rise in industrial concentration, caused by excessively lax antitrust enforcement, is bad for the economy, and must now be reversed