THE LEGISLATIVE HISTORY OF THE SHERMAN ACT RE-EXAMINED

According to Robert Bork's influential analysis, the Sherman Act was expressly instituted by the 51st Congress to advance consumer welfare, but has often been misinterpreted by federal courts handing down anticonsumer decisions. This paper suggests that the political coalition backing the 1890 antitrust statute sought multiple social ends and did not faithfully seek to impose economic efficiency. The key evidence includes historical economic trends, congressional debate, the legislative agenda of Senator John Sherman, and the political conflict generated by the most contentious (and most electorally important) issue of the 51st Congress: the highly protectionist McKinley Tariff Act.     

THE RISE OF THE CHICAGO PACKERS and THE ORIGINS OF MEAT INSPECTION and ANTITRUST

The Meat Inspection Act of 1891 and the Sherman Act of 1890 are closely tied. This link makes clearer Congress' intent in enacting the legislation. Both laws were products of economic conditions after 1880 and reflected, in part, widespread concern about the market power of Chicago meat packers. The concerns of local slaughterhouses, which were being displaced by new, low-cost refrigerated beef, and of farmers, who sold livestock to the large Chicago packers, were echoed elsewhere by other small businesses and farmers, who feared for their livelihood during a time of structural change in the economy.     

THE ECONOMICS OF TENANT RIGHTS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY IRISH AGRICULTURE

The Land Act of 1870, which introduced "tenant rights" to most of Ireland, was the prototype of the modern land reform. This paper develops an alternative to the conventional view that the Land Act was instituted to redistribute wealth. It is suggested that tenant rights became economically valuable as a result of massive emigration from Ireland in the nineteenth century. Data on land rents and landlord investment are consistent with this "efficiency" hypothesis, and tend to refute the "redistribution" hypothesis.     

AN ANALYTIC HISTORY OF DELIVERED PRICE LITIGATION: DO COURTS PROPERLY DISTINGUISH RIVALROUS FROM COLLUSIVE INSTANCES?

The federal judiciary's present, cautious approach to delivered pricing is appropriate. Using court records and recent contributions to the economic literature, this article evaluates the antitrust history of those practices. Delivered pricing can replace mill pricing naturally in some rivalrous settings, but under special circumstances could be collusive. Thus, delivered pricing has sometimes been adjudged a Sherman Act violation, but only given other evidence of collusion. For a time, however, the legal system threatened to treat delivered pricing as a per se violation of the Clayton and Federal Trade Commission Acts. That reflected poor economic understanding.     

THE INFLUENCE OF ECONOMICS ON ANTITRUST LAW

Economists today play prominent roles in formulating antitrust policy and litigating antitrust cases. This paper explains why economics influences antitrust law and describes how economic theories enter and shape the antitrust system. Antitrust policy and doctrine change over time in response to developments in economic theory, and the decentralization of the antitrust adjudication system and the wide latitude accorded judges in interpreting antitrust statutes ensure that legal rules will reflect advances in the economic literature concerning the appropriate content of standards governing business conduct.     

THE LAW OF GENIUS AND HOME RUNS REFUTED

In a lively, provocative article, DeVany claims inter alia that the size distribution of home runs follows a continuous "power law" distribution which is nested in a larger class of "stable" statistical distributions characterized by an infinite variance. He uses this putative fact about the size distribution of home runs to argue that concern about the use of steroids to enhance home run ability is necessarily misplaced. In this article, we show that the initial claim is false and argue that the subsequent claim about the potential importance of steroid use does not follow from the first. We also show that the method used to establish that the size distribution of home runs is characterized by an infinite variance is unreliable and will find evidence "consistent" with infinite variance in all but the most trivial of data sets generated by processes with finite variance. Despite a large and growing literature that spans several fields and uses methods and arguments similar to DeVany's, we argue that mere inspection of the unconditional distribution of some human phenomenon is unlikely to yield much insight. ( JEL C16, L83)     

TOWARD A POSITIVE ECONOMIC THEORY OF ANTITRUST

Most economists associate antitrust policy with the Sherman and Clayton Acts. Nonetheless, there is in England and America a much older body of antitrust law, namely, the common law of restraint of trade. This regulation, like language and markets, evolved over a long period of time. This article examines whether the rules that the common law courts developed can be explained by a hypothetical wish to maximize social wealth and concludes that many of them can be. The last part of the article outlines a theory of legal evolution.     

ANTITRUST and COMPETITION, HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED

Although antitrust laws enjoy wide support among economists, there was almost no such support during the early years of the Sherman Act. One reason for this transformation is a change in the theory of competition. Until the 1920s most economists viewed competition as a dynamic, rivalrous process that would be stifled by antitrust laws. Once the perfect competition model–which largely ignores rivalry–was accepted, economists' opinions of antitrust grew more favorable. To the extent that antitrust interferes with rivalry and enterprise, the competitive model has very likely misdirected the profession, at least as far as antitrust policy is concerned.     

Systemic Constraints to Ecological Well-Being: The Case of the 1985 Food Security Act1

Abstract Although the conservation title of the 1985 Food Security Act was hailed by many as revolutionary in its attempts to control soil erosion, it has failed to live up to its billing. A theory is used that asserts that the state's systemic commitment to promoting capitalist growth constrains it from establishing and implementing policies that accomplish anything more than displacing one environmental problem onto others. The theory is tested through a discourse analysis of the hearings surrounding the Federal government's attempt to control soil erosion through the 1985 Food Security Act, which revealed that policy recommendations challenging the drive to maximize efficiency and production were declared flawed and unacceptable. Hence, the hearings were systematically distorted in favor of the dominant instrumental rationality. It is concluded that government policy initiatives alone are insufficient and that creating alternative social organizations of production is necessary to promote ecological well-being.     

THE BEHAVIOR OF REGULATORY ACTIVITY OVER THE BUSINESS CYCLE: AN EMPIRICAL TEST

This paper tests a prediction of the interest-group theory of regulation which suggests that regulators generally will not force any one group to bear the full adjustment costs associated with variations in the business cycle. That is, the interest-group model predicts that regulatory agencies will redistribute cyclical gains and losses by supplying more "producer protection" regulation during contractions and more "consumer protection" regulation during expansions; i.e., regulatory activity which reduces consumer welfare will tend to be countercyclical, intensifying when aggregate demand falls and abating as demand increases.
The empirical results show a countercyclical and statistically significant ceteris paribus relationship between Federal Trade Commission enforcement efforts under the Robinson-Patman Act and several alternative measures of general business conditions. Since the Robinson-Patman Act is viewed widely as anti-consumer, the findings suggest that in cyclical downturns the Commission moves to protect producers against losses by bringing more cases which limit the tendency for prices to fall. This result may be rationalized under the view that during recessions, the Federal Trade Commission is in the business of transferring wealth from consumers either to protect small business or to bolster cartels. On the other hand, during business expansions the Commission reduces its Robinson-Patman case load, and such a change in enforcement may serve to mitigate producer gains, transferring wealth to consumers at the margin. In any case the paper offers empirical support for the interest-group model by providing evidence that the business cycle plays an important part in explaining the level and pattern of regulatory activity.     

THE CALCULUS OF VOTING RECONSIDERED

A rational economic hypothesis of the citizen's decision tovote or not vote in U. S. presidential elections has been citedas an example of the replacement of social-psychologically oriented"empirical generalizations" by axiomatically based deductivepropositions in political science. However, close scrutiny showsthat the rational (or political) economic paradigm is no moreaccurate a theory than previously popular systems analysis orfunctional paradigms. The claimed verification of the originalhypothesis was based on an apparently imprecise, adhoc, ordinalprocedure that could not distinguish between the intimatelyrelated rational economic and social-psychological hypotheses.A more powerful technique resolves the issue in favor of thelatter model for the data used by the original authors.     

THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH AND THE EFFICIENCY OF INSTITUTIONS

This paper explores the efect on economic efficiency of the distribution of wealth and systems for enforcing property rights. We construct a two-person, two-period economy in which each person can consume, plant, transfer or steal corn. We find circumstances in which redistribution of wealth is Pareto optimal and in which increasing sanctions against theft to their maximum level is not. These results suggest that it is not only important to consider distribution in the design of property institutions, but also that redistribution itself may serve to increase the efficiency of systems of property rights.     

IMPACT OF THE NEW ZEALAND SEAT BELT LAW

Offsetting consumer behavior may have reduced the effectiveness of a mandatory seat belt law in reducing fatalities in New Zealand. It appears that the favorable effect on automobile occupants may be offset partially, or in some models perhaps completely, by deaths among cyclists and pedestrians that may be caused by more dangerous driving by drivers who feel safer. Furthermore, the improvement in safety found for occupants is smaller than generally reported in the literature. A caveat is that speed may be endogenous for some models.     

PRIVATE MATERIALISM, PERSONAL SELF-FULFILLMENT, FAMILY LIFE, AND PUBLIC INTEREST THE NATURE, EFFECTS, AND CAUSES OF RECENT CHANGES IN THE VALUES OF AMERICAN YOUTH

From the early seventies through 1986–87, private materialismas a life goal increased greatly in importance among Americanyouth, goals relating to family life increased somewhat, publicinterest concerns diminished modestly, and the goal of personalself-fulfillment declined sharply. Accompanying this shift invalues was a change in young people's college majors and careerplans toward those leading to higher paying jobs and a markedincrease in the attractiveness of working in large corporations.Jobs offering money and status became more preferred relativeto those with opportunities for self-fulfillment or public service.Support grew for capitalist institutions such as profit makingand advertising. At the same time, there was a retreat frompolitical involvement, and a conservative shift in politicalbeliefs. Explanations of the shift in values in terms of theimpact on the young of major political and social events orthe emergence of a feeling of economic insecurity among theyoung are not supported by the evidence. Nor are a number ofhypotheses relating to changes in young people's family structureor social ization experience. The shift in values of the youngdoes, how ever, apparently correspond to a similar change inthe values of adults generally and, thus, may reflect changesin the values transmitted to young people as they were growingup. We specu late that the shift in values among adults was,in turn, caused by a growing feeling of economic deprivationin the post-1973 period as real wage rates declined and materialaspirations continued to rise. In the last few years, the shiftin the life goals of the young appears to have ended and mayeven have started to reverse, but young people today are stillmuch different from those 15 years ago.     

THE LAW OF DEMAND, POSITIVE SLOPING MARGINAL REVENUE, AND MULTIPLE PROFIT EQUILIBRIA

This paper demonstrates that the conditions for a positively sloping marginal revenue curve are much less stringent than is generally recognized. Simple transformations of any well-behaved convex demand function can easily result in a demand for which marginal revenue is positively sloping. For this reason, positively sloping marginal revenue functions must be considered whenever convex demand functions are analyzed. The existence of positively sloping marginal revenue makes multiple profit equilibria for the firm a very real possibility.     

AN EXAMINATION OF THE MARKET FOR FAVORS AND VOTES IN CONGRESS

This paper examines the strategies that "horse traders" and "power brokers" adopt in trading favors to pass legislation. Although the favors that they trade are generally impossible to observe, the paper develops a model that allows tests of favor trading. With data from the Senate vote on the Byrd Amendment to the 1990 Clean Air Act I conduct such a test. The test provides evidence that on this vote (i) favor trading occurred, (ii) the coalition leaders practiced price discrimination, and (iii) the coalition leaders did not collude with each another.     

PREDICTING THE QUANTITY OF LAW: Single versus Multiple Remedies in Sexual Harassment Cases

Recently, Black's theory of law has been criticized for failing to capture quasi and de facto governmental social control institutions. A restatement of this theory introduces the idea of "more or less governmental social control" that encompasses government endorsement of private forms of social control or government delegation of social control powers to private parties. Drawing from this, we assess the utility of Black's theory by examining sexual harassment cases handled by the Canadian Human Rights Commission , a quasi-governmental body that has been delegated social control powers. Previous tests of Black's theory have relied primarily on criminal processes that often involve identifiable increments in law. While a sexual harassment case may be settled or dismissed, paralleling the criminal justice process of conviction or acquittal, further increments in law are less identifiable within this quasi-governmental institution. Using over 200 sexual harassment cases in Canada, we test several concepts from Black's theory for explaining decision making within a quasi-governmental social control institution and, specifically, for predicting whether single or multiple remedies are used to resolve these types of cases. Our results show some support for Black's theory, but demonstrate that whether a case was sent to conciliation played a greater role in predicting the quantity of law than the social structural dimensions emphasized by Black or the offense seriousness variables highlighted by more traditional criminal justice research.     

THE LONG ARM OF THE LAW:

This article offers a test of labeling theory by exploring whether contact with school and justice system authorities has long-term, negative, and independent effects on an individual's labor market success. We use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), a large and nationally representative sample, to examine whether experiences ranging from school suspension to incarceration during ages 15–23 can predict occupational status, income, and employment during ages 29–37. Unlike previous studies, we control for an exhaustive list of variables: social background, human capital, prior deviant behavior, family status, and local context. Our findings generally support labelling theory. Severe forms of labeling like sentencing and incaraceration have the strongest negative effects, though among females suspension or expulsion from school also has consistently negative effects. We conclude with a discussion of how labeling might reduce employment chances, with a focus on gender differences.     

INTEGRATIVE PROBLEM-CENTERED THERAPY: TOWARD THE SYNTHESIS OF FAMILY AND INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOTHERAPIES*

Emerging from the growing trend toward integration in the field of psychotherapy, Integrative Problem-Centered Therapy (IPCT) provides a model for applying different modalities (individual and family) and orientations (behavioral, communicational and psychodynamic) to the broad range of problems patients bring to psychotherapy. Based on the assumption that each modality and orientation possesses its own domain of expertise, IPCT attempts to interrelate the major modalities and orientations to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. The goal is to create a maximally effective and efficient problem-centered psychotherapy. This paper presents an overview of IPCT, delineating its core principles and premises as well as the basic methodological steps in IPCT.     

A POSITIVE THEORY OF DISCRETIONARY POLICY, THE COST OF DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT AND THE BENEFITS OF A CONSTITUTION

We offer an explanation of government's preference for discretionary policy action. The main elements are asymmetric information and the ability and desire of governments to maximize reelection prospects. Discretionary policy imposes a social cost. We show that the cost is eliminated if all voters have the same information as the government. An optimal, state contingent policy rule that precommits government through a constitution eliminates the cost by removing government's opportunities to exploit its informational advantage. Rules of this kind, and constitutional restrictions, are difficult to enforce in the presence of uncertainty and different information available to government and the public.