Collaborative Research: The Law and Politics of Antitrust in Open Economies

反垄断法禁止卡特尔和其他反竞争行为，以维护消费者利益，促进市场效率和创新。法律理论、理论模型和反垄断的实证分析传统上假设“封闭”经济，在那里市场和民族国家的边界重合。然而今天，外国公司经常在美国市场上竞争，出口对美国公司来说越来越重要。本项目提供了对开放经济体中反垄断的新理解，并收集了大量关于反垄断法律和执法的新数据，以便对贸易与反垄断之间的关系进行系统分析。20年前，只有不到40个国家有反垄断法。今天，超过130个国家这样做。引人注目的是，反垄断法的迅速扩散与国际贸易的实质性自由化同时发生，尽管贸易开放通常被认为通过增加市场竞争来减少对反垄断法的需求。这引发了人们的担忧，即各国政府在制定和执行反托拉斯法时，是否带有针对外国生产商的保护主义偏见。或者，贸易开放可能需要更有力的执法，并导致国际执法合作的增加，因为开放贸易为国际反托拉斯违法行为创造了更大的机会和动机。本项目从理论上考察贸易-反垄断关系，并通过收集反垄断法律和执法的新数据（美国几十年来的行业层面以及许多其他国家的总体数据）从实证上考察贸易-反垄断关系。因此，它为关于国际反垄断制度的重要政策辩论提供了更强有力的理论和实证基础。更广泛地说，它将提高我们对法律如何调解政治和经济之间关系的理解，阐明在关键问题领域将权力下放给专家机构的影响，并促进我们对经济全球化的政治和政策后果的理解。该项目还将培养研究生和法律系学生的社会科学研究方法。此外，它将创建一个数据库，对其他对贸易和反垄断感兴趣的学者有用，这是一个紧迫的公共经济问题。

Antitrust law prohibits cartels and other anti-competitive practices in order to safeguard consumer interests and promote market efficiency and innovation. Legal doctrines, theoretical models, and empirical analyses of antitrust traditionally assume "closed" economies, where the boundaries of the market and the nation state coincide. Yet today, foreign firms often compete in U.S. markets, and exports are increasingly important for U.S. firms. This project offers a new understanding of antitrust in open economies and gathers extensive new data on antitrust laws and enforcement to allow systematic analyses of the relationship between trade and antitrust.Two decades ago, less than forty countries had antitrust laws. Today, more than one hundred thirty countries do. Strikingly, this rapid proliferation of antitrust laws has coincided with substantial liberalization of international trade, even though trade openness has conventionally been thought to reduce the need for antitrust by increasing market competition. This raises the concern whether governments are enacting and enforcing antitrust laws with a protectionist bias against foreign producers. Alternatively, trade openness may require more vigorous enforcement and lead to increased international enforcement cooperation, because open trade creates greater opportunities and incentives for international antitrust violations. This project examines the trade-antitrust relationship theoretically, as well as empirically by collecting new data on antitrust laws and enforcement (at the industry level over several decades in the United States and in the aggregate for numerous other countries). It thus provides a stronger theoretical and empirical foundation for the important policy debate over an international antitrust regime. More broadly, it will improve our understanding of how law mediates the relationship between politics and economics, elucidate the effects of delegating authority to expert bodies in a crucial issue area, and advance our understanding of the political and policy consequences of economic globalization.The project will also train graduate students and law students in methods of social science research. In addition, it will create a database that will be useful to other scholars interested in trade and antitrust, a pressing public economic issue.