Antitrust Economics

This book brings together the work of Oliver E. Williamson, a recognized contributor to the literature of industrial organization and antitrust economics. Williamson's contributions have included work on vertical integration and non-standard contracting practices, the modern corporation, strategic inter-firm behaviour and economies as an antitrust defence. By helping to promote a new understanding of complex forms of economic organization, public policy in each of these areas has been influenced and sometimes reformed as a consequence. The work deals successively with mergers, complex contracting practices, strategic behaviour and the impact of ideas on antitrust enforcement. Applied price theory and the new apparatus of transaction cost economics are both brought to bear. With a focus on the theory and pratice of antitrust in the US, the book is of wider application to any country tackling the problem of the control of big business and monopoly power.