Antitrust Division Public Roundtable Series on the Relationship between Competition and Regulation

By Tad Lipsky, Joshua D. Wright (George Mason University), Douglas H. Ginsburg (US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit) & John M. Yun (Antonin Scalia Law School)

This Comment is submitted to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), Antitrust Division Public Roundtable Series on Competition and Deregulation, Third Roundtable On Anticompetitive Regulations. The Global Antitrust Institute’s Competition Advocacy Program applauds the DOJ for acknowledging the limitations of price regulation and the unintended consequences that can arise when competitive forces are displaced. We discuss three aspects of government price controls to regulate competition: (1) the social costs of price regulation in a market economy, (2) the problematic history of price regulation and its consequences, and (3) examples of modern price regulation and the role of antitrust.

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