In recent decades, antitrust law has become harder and harder to enforce. This brief article proposes a number of sensible and practical antitrust reforms that would help to invigorate antitrust enforcement against a wide range of anticompetitive practices, including by dominant tech firms. However, I also caution against more radical populist antitrust proposals, which are concerned primarily with how big a firm is and not whether it is engaging in harmful conduct. By failing to distinguish between anticompetitive behavior and desirable economic growth, such policies would cause severe economic damage. More judicious antitrust reforms, like those advocated here, would invigorate competition without stifling economic progress.
In the last decade, antitrust has surged into the public spotlight. There is a widespread view that antitrust law must do more to address the abuses of large companies. This is fueled in large part by the rising prominence of Big Tech companies, whose vast web of products and services touch upon many aspects of our daily lives and public discourse.
As an economist and law professor specializing in antitrust, I have written many articles advocating pro-enforcement policies in a range of areas, including the tech sector. Below, I outline a number of policy measures that would generate substantial economic benefits for the public. These are sensible, practical opportunities for reform that could be implemented on top of existing laws, avoiding the need for a comprehensive overhaul of the antitrust system.
However, not all reform ideas are equal. A more radical reform effort seeks to reshape antitrust from the ground up, deemphasizing economic harms like high prices and focusing instead on how large corporations might undermine democracy.1 Grounded in the populist belief that big businesses are inherently bad for society, these proposals advocate drastic preventative measures, such as breaking up large firms or prohibiting them from introducing new products, even if they have not engaged in anticompetitive behavior. Although well-intentioned, these proposals are impulsive and reckless. If enacted, they would have disastrous effects on the public: higher prices, worse products, fewer jobs, and reduced innovation and growth.
Effective antitrust reforms would enhance our economic prosperity, not diminish it. Antitrust’s job is to protect competition so that markets produce desirable results for the public. The prevailing antitrust system falls short of that goal, leading to worse economic outcomes for many Americans. However, the solution is not to throttle our most productive businesses just because they’re big, but rather to police them and ensure they play by the rules. We don’t have to choose between a level playing field and a thriving business sector. By enacting sensible antitrust reforms, we can have both.
