Common Aspects of the Chicago and Harvard Schools of Antitrust Analysis: The Neo-Institutional Contribution

By Jesús Soto Pineda (Universidad Externado de Colombia) & Luis Jaramillo De Los Ríos (University of Medellin)

On the understanding that Harvard and Chicago Schools postulates are the ones used nowadays by scholars in the development and study of antitrust law contents, this paper conducts a comparative analysis between those and the conceptual pillars of the Neo-institutional School. Within the framework of traditional disputes between Chicago and Harvard Schools, the advances of Neoinstitutionalism in the areas of the law of contracts, intellectual propriety and transactional costs, might explain how both Schools support different purposes for competition law, but rely on the same origins, since the two of them were created – leaving aside their views on a more flexible or strict regulation of antitrust law – to fight harmful excess of market power and corporate mergers. It is in that context, that taking as a starting point the very nature of the economic activity, from the competition among companies in the market and the company by itself, the Neoinstitutionalism explains how processes of market power and concentration can emerge, going beyond what traditional perspectives have considered about them.

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