Antitrust Contests

Director of the FTC Bureau of Economics Michael Baye posted slides of Antitrust Contests from a conference presentation in Stockholm. I am a co-author on the project along with FTC economist Paul Pautler. The paper is an attempt to structurally estimate a Tullock contest model of antitrust litigation using some unique data on economic labor effort by both sides in FTC litigation while controlling for other important determinants of litigation outcomes. The slides show our model, some estimates, and simulation results. This particular paper is part of a broader research agenda studying the role of economists, economic knowledge, and economic evidence in antitrust litigation and enforcement more generally. I’ll be doing some blogging about a more related project, but you can preview a preliminary version of our work on economic training and judicial decision making in antitrust here.