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Original Intent and the Sherman Antitrust Act: A Re-examination of the Consumer-Welfare Hypothesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Christopher Grandy
Christopher Grandy
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, Barnard College, New York, NY 10027 and Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, H1 96822.
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Abstract

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An important tenet of the Chicago School of antitrust asserts that the Sherman Act's framers sought to foster consumer welfare. This article challenges that interpretation by re-examining the legislative history. That history suggests that a consumer-welfare standard did not survive the legislative process and that, if anything, Congress focused on the behavior of producers.

Type
Papers Presented at the Fifty-Second Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , June 1993 , pp. 359 - 376
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1993

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