Two pieces of legislation, enacted in 1914, largely complete the structure of American antitrust law, the first of these in the Clayton act.
The Clayton Act prohibits a number of specific business practices. Section 2 of this act prohibits price discrimination:
It shall be unlawful for any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such commerce, [...]
The Sherman antitrust act was passed in 1890. It has two substantive provisions, which are deceptively simple:
Antitrust and economic theory: an uneasy friendship, “Yale law journal volume 87, number 7, June 1978, p. 1525.
Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states, or with [...]
Government influences the course of business in many ways. Examples are tax and tariff policy, laws that aim to prevent fraud or misrepresentation, and price controls. But our interest is in government policies that concern market performance.
Such policies fall into three broad categories: public ownership, regulation of private enterprise and what in the United States [...]
