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，以保护消费者利益，促进市场效率和创新。反垄断的法律理论、理论模型和经验分析传统上假定市场和民族国家的边界重合的“封闭”经济。然而，如今，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。该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和执法的新数据，以便能够系统地分析贸易和反垄断之间的关系。20年前，只有不到40个国家制定了反垄断法。今天，有130多个国家这样做。引人注目的是，反垄断法的迅速普及与国际贸易的大幅自由化不谋而合，尽管贸易开放通常被认为通过增加市场竞争来减少反垄断的必要性。这引发了人们的担忧，即各国政府制定和执行的反垄断法是否带有针对外国生产商的保护主义倾向。或者，贸易开放可能需要更有力的执法，并导致加强国际执法合作，因为开放贸易为违反国际反垄断行为创造了更大的机会和诱因。该项目通过收集关于反垄断法和执法的新数据(在美国几十年的行业一级和许多其他国家的总体数据)，从理论上和经验上审查了贸易与反垄断的关系。因此，它为关于国际反垄断制度的重要政策辩论提供了更坚实的理论和经验基础。更广泛地说，它将增进我们对法律如何调解政治和经济之间关系的理解，阐明在一个关键问题领域向专家机构授权的影响，并增进我们对经济全球化的政治和政策后果的理解。

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.