Consumers get forgotten in all the politics. The best way to protect consumers is to protect an open, competitive market process, in which companies succeed or fail based not on their political connections or ideological correctness, but on how well they serve consumers.
Antitrust regulation’s problems are structural and incurable. The Competitive Enterprise Institutes advocates abolishing antitrust law, removing remaining government monopolies, and preventing the creation of new ones.
Featured Posts
News Release
Radical change at Biden FTC leads to busted norms, new agenda facing skeptical judiciary: CEI paper
In July 2021, President Biden signed an executive order on competition policy, calling the previous 40 years of bipartisan agreement on the issue “an experiment…
Study
Achieving Change at the Federal Trade Commission
Introduction “Never mistake activity for achievement.” – John Wooden Although small in budget, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has sometimes had an outsized impact. Created to fulfill one of…
The Wall Street Journal
‘Net Neutrality’ Faces a Stiff Judicial Test
The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday along partisan lines to reclassify broadband internet access service as a common carrier telecommunications service under Title II of…
Search Posts
Op-Eds
The New Trustbusters
Joel Klein is a famous man. The head of the Antitrust Division at the U.S. Department of Justice usually toils in anonymity, known only…
Study
A Defective Product: Consumer Groups’ Study of Microsoft In Need of Recall
View Full Document as PDF Consumer groups are supposed to be on the side of consumers. But three such groups – the…
Study
The Exxon-Mobil Merger: The Lessons of History
The proposed Exxon-Mobil merger, the largest merger ever undertaken, has set nervous tongues wagging. Much of the concern stems from the perceived lessons of…
Study
Wal-Mart: Santa or Satan?
View Full Document as PDF As Christmas shoppers flock to Wal-Mart, filling its parking lots to overflowing, should they feel they’ve…
Products
Predation’s Problems (Continued)
The case against predatory pricing is much stronger than argued by Donald Boudreaux in "The Problem with Predation" (CEI UpDate, September 1998). Boudreaux relies primarily…
Citation
Customers Granted Microsoft its 90 Percent Market Share
Study
Why Robert Bork Is Wrong:
Is there a clear legal precedent for the successful prosecution of Microsoft? Robert H. Bork seems to think so. He has stated emphatically…
Study
Computers and Competition: A Primer for Congress
With a new Microsoft hearing in the Senate on Thursday, legislators should keep in mind some crucial facts that argue against interference in…
Products
A Titanic Question of Public Policy
Ok, I’ll admit it. Last month I became perhaps the last human being in this section of the solar system to see the movie…
Study
Electric Avenues: Why “Open Access” Can’t Compete
Full Document Available in PDF The regulation of electricity markets…
Study
Destroying Competition in Order to Save It: Predation Rules and the Airline Industry
“We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” According to legend, this rationale was once given by the U.S. army to…
Op-Eds
Micro-managing Bill Gates
Full article available in pdf Republicans are known for praising markets and condemning overregulation of business. But oddly, they often conspicuously endorse…
Products
Crying Silicon Tears
If one set out to design vicious special- interest legislation to loot productive companies and distribute the spoils to lesser competitors, one could scarcely do…
Study
Bill, Bob, and Browsers: Why DOJ’s Case Against Microsoft is Flawed
While Microsoft has been pilloried by newspaper pundits, a trial court judge, and other alleged computer experts for not submitting to the federal government,…
Study
Network Effects: Does Luck or Talent Rule the High-Technology Market?
Does luck matter more than talent in the marketplace after all? Many of today’s calls for antitrust interference in the marketplace are rooted in a…
Products
Back to the Future
Over the past several years, America has faced a disturbing trend. It started with the disco revival and John Travolta’s return to the silver screen.
News Release
Ralph Nader’s Anti-Microsoft Campaign Hurts Consumers
WASHINGTON, DC, November 12 , 1997 — The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) suspects that Ralph Nader does not speak for all consumers in his…
News Release
James Gattuso Joins CEI as Vice President
Washington, D. C., December 22nd, 1997 – The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) announced today that James Gattuso has joined the staff as Vice President…
News Release
Antitrust Enforcement Punishes Consumers, Protects Business
Two new publications from the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Antitrust Reform Project unmask antitrust law as a bad deal for consumers. Though purported to regulate…
Products
Back Into Busting Trust-Busters
CEI’s work on antitrust reform may surprise some readers. Antitrust, after all, has been heraled as the "touchstone of a free market." Antitrust…
Products
Rethinking Antitrust Rules
Excerpts from Judge Alex Kozinski's speech at CEI's June 27, 1997 conference on antitrust regulation Printed in the July 1997 issue of CEI…
Study
Antitrust Policy As Corporate Welfare
Full Document Available in PDF Political party reformers promised to roll back the…
Study
Antitrust and The Commons: Cooperation or Collusion?
Full Document Available in PDF People have long been aware that unbridled…
News Release
CEI Announces June Antitrust Conference
WASHINGTON, DC May 12, 1997– The Competitive Enterprise Institute is proud to invite you to attend RETHINKING ANTITRUST REGULATION: Reform, Repeal, or Retreat?…
Products
Officious Intermeddlers
With its April 4 decision to block Staples' planned merger with Office Depot, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) provided fresh evidence that antitrust is economically…
Op-Eds
Microsoft Is a Competitor, Not a ‘Predator’
Published in The Wall Street Journal<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> October 7, 1996 …
Products
Children’s Games
In a spasm of inaccuracy, a textbook writer once enthused that antitrust law is the "Magna Carta of free enterprise." A more accurate label for…
Products
Wal-Mart — Predator or Prey?
In 1991, three retail pharmacies in Faulkner County, Arkansas, sued Wal-Mart for selling pharmaceutical items at predatorily low prices. The plaintiffs claimed that Wal-Mart's below-cost…
Op-Eds
Trading Away Free Trade
Full article is available in PDF (Liberty magazine, November 1994, pp. 22-26). The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade has lowered the world’s…
Study
Instrastate Trucking: Stronghold of the Regulators
The deregulatory wave of the 1970s and early 1980s freed the railroads, the airlines, air cargo carriers, and interstate trucking and buses from the…
Study
Antitrust and the 99th Congress
Full Document Available in PDF…
Study
Washington Antitrust Report
View Full Document as PDF Antitrust reform is in serious trouble. The Administration’s efforts to legislate…
Op-Eds
What’s Wrong With Business Lobbyists
Fred Smith Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, January 16, 1986…
Op-Eds
An Antitrust Route to Re-regulation
From telecommunications to airlines and railroads, from banking to natural gas, from trucking to broadcasting, partial deregulation has changed the U.S. economic landscape for…
Op-Eds
Taxpayers Tied to the Tracks
Full article available in pdf. In the latest episode of the Perils of Pauline, the villain, (a.k.a., Amtrak—the most heavily subsidized…
Op-Eds
Corporate Bankruptcy Needs A Fresh Market Review
Full Article Available in PDF Format THE RECENT SPATE OF bankrupt cies involving large corporations has triggered a new…
Op-Eds
Why Not Abolish Antitrust?
Full Article Available in PDF Format Deregulators appear to be of two minds about antitrust. They denounce the actual practice…
Staff & Scholars
Richard Morrison
Senior Fellow
- Antitrust
- Business and Government
- Capitalism and Free Enterprise
Iain Murray
Vice President for Strategy and Senior Fellow
- Banking and Finance
- Trade and International
Clyde Wayne Crews
Fred L. Smith Fellow in Regulatory Studies
- Business and Government
- Consumer Freedom
- Deregulation
Ryan Young
Senior Economist
- Antitrust
- Business and Government
- Regulatory Reform
Jessica Melugin
Director of the Center for Technology & Innovation
- Antitrust
- Innovation
- Media, Speech and Internet Freedoms
Alex Reinauer
Research Fellow
- Antitrust
- Innovation
- Tech and Telecom