Ideas for Paper Topics

 

  1. Analyze the original goals of the Sherman Act. How were these goals modified by later antitrust legislation?
  2. How do the goals of European Community competition policy contrast with those of U.S. antitrust policy?
  3. Trace the market shares of major firms in the U.S. oil industry from the breakup of Standard Oil following the 1911 antitrust case. Was the breakup effective in achieving competitive market performance? Why or why not? Suggest and defend an alternative remedy.
  4. Trace the history of the United Shoe Machinery Corporation after the 1953 decision. How did this decision affect market performance?
  5. Identify the firms that sell automobile insurance in your state. Compute a Herfindahl index for this market. How is such insurance regulated? Find out what you can about the profitability of the firms that sell automobile insurance. Discuss the structural and performance issues that surround the automobile insurance industry.
  6. Consult the index to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal from the early 1980s to the present, and write a paper analyzing structure, conduct, and performance in the manufacture of jet engines. What is the role of the Pentagon in this market?
  7. Using one or two companies as examples evaluate market mechanisms and mechanisms within the firm that are said to constrain managers to act as profit maximizers.
  8. Describe Japanese competition policy—-in letter and in practice. Discuss the relationship between Japanese competition policy and Japanese industrial policy.
  9. Examine the bases of scale economies or economies of scope in some industry (for example, banking, etc.).
  10. Estimate profit-concentration regressions for subsamples of industries contained in 2-digit SIC industries, comparing results, for example, for producer goods and consumer goods industries.
  11. Pick a cartel: Evaluate the Australian challenge to de Beers. What happened to the international tin cartel? Evaluate the New York City ready-mix cement cartel? There are other domestic and international cartels one could pick.
  12. Case Study: The cola price war.
  13. Case study of Kodak as a dominant producer of film.
  14. Analyze the economic issues of an antitrust case. Examples: ReaLemon (FTC, 1978), USFL v. NFL, Archer-Daniels-Midland (high fructose corn syrup), Tetraethyl Lead (FTC,1983)(gasoline additives).
  15. Using newspaper accounts to obtain pricing data, analyze the impact of Wal-Mart’s entry into a local retailing market.
  16. Case study of a company that went private and then returned public (for example, American Greetings, Harley-Davidson).
  17. Evaluate a major merger (recent or historical).
  18. Compare the successive drafts of the Department of Justice Merger Guidelines from 1967 to date. Can you find a correlation with the changing text and the changing pattern of anti-merger cases prosecuted?
  19. Can advertising confer monopoly power? Suggestions: look at Tylenol, Ibuprofen, Cadillac, Clorox, the perfume industry, etc.
  20. Discuss the law and economics of commodity bundling.
  21. Analyze the law and economics of exclusive dealing.
  22. In 1986, the FTC blocked horizontal mergers between soft-drink syrup producers, but did not contest mergers between syrup producers and bottlers. Evaluate these decisions. Discuss horizontal and vertical integration in the soft drink industry.
  23. Investigate the role of venture capital firms in fostering technological innovation.
  24. Evaluate Canada’s experience with pharmaceutical patents.
  25. How strict should laws be toward intellectual property (patents, copyright, trademarks)?
  26. What was the breakfast cereal antitrust case? What role did product differentiation play in the economic theory of the case? How did this case seek to expend public policy toward the exercise of market power by oligopolists.
  27. Consult Boise Cascade Corp. v. FTC (637 F.2d 573 (1980), and Plywood (655 F.2d 627 (1981)), and the references cited therein. Analyze the treatment of basing point systems under the antitrust laws.
  28. Discuss the public policy and economic implications of the Supreme Court’s holding in Kiefer-Stewart Co. v. Joseph E. Seagram (340 US 211 (1951)).
  29. Analyze the functioning of the international steel export cartel in the 1930s.
  30. In the late 1970s there were European Community and Japanese competition policy actions involving the petroleum industry and an aborted private vs. antitrust action against OPEC itself. Discuss and compare antitrust/competition policy treatment of the petroleum industry.
  31. Discuss the role of foreign pressure in stiffening enforcement of Japan’s Antimonopoly Law.
  32. Analyze the role of business groups (keiretsu) in the Japanese economy.
  33. Explore the legal and economic implications of the rules that apply to the patenting of the output of biotechnological R&D.
  34. In 1990, the European Commission voted to permit a merger of two Dutch coffee firms, Douwe Erberts and Van Nelle, over the objections of Sir Leon Brittan, the EC competition commissioner. Analyze the issues in the decision.
  35. How does the concept of antitrust injury affect private enforcement of the antitrust laws.
  36. Evaluate Sir Leon Brittan’s 1992 proposals that GATT assume a role in establishing and enforcing international rules of competition policy. Did Brittan’s view prevail? Should it?
  37. Discuss the development and marketing of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney. Or, pick another revolutionary innovation and discuss its development and marketing.
  38. Detecting and deterring chiseling in cartels: theory and applications.
  39. Is the jury system capable of handling antitrust cases?
  40. How significant has the theory of contestability been as a contribution to the explanation of how markets work? Has empirical work supported the theory?
  41. Discuss the economics of restaurant pricing. Why do restaurant owners refrain from raising prices when they observe the formation of lines in front of their establishments. Becker has written on this.
  42. Case study: the fishing industry, or some other interesting industry we are not covering in class (check Adams, Brock reader book for industries covered in class).
  43. Discuss the legal and economic implications of SCM Corporation v. Xerox Corporation 463 F.Supp.983 (1978), which concerns patent and antitrust law.
  44. Discuss the evolution of antitrust analysis of predation in California Computer Products v. IBM 613 F.2d 727 (9th Cir.1979); Wm. Inglis and Sons Baking co. v. ITT Continental Baking Co. 668 F.2d 1014(9th Cir. 1981); Transamerica Computer Co. v. IBM 698 F.2d 1377 (9th Cir. 1983) and other cases as necessary.
  45. How have HMOs changed the health care industry?
  46. Discuss privatization efforts in England, or another European or South American country.
  47. Discuss privatization efforts in the United States (for example, jails, and other city services).