Entry
Reader's guide
Entries A-Z
Subject index
Antitrust
Antitrust ostensibly aims to keep markets competitive. Such regulation is justified, it is claimed, because markets too frequently become monopolized in the absence of government intervention to ensure competition. Using both civil and criminal sanctions, antitrust statutes seek to prevent the three classes of behavior, all thought to be anticompetitive and, thus, harmful to consumers: collusion among rivals, mergers that threaten to create excessive monopoly power, and any number of exclusionary practices— such as predatory pricing—that allegedly hamper rivals' ability to compete.
The longstanding and still-popular explanation for the enactment of antitrust legislation in the United States holds that, starting in the 19th century, Congress sought to protect consumers from the increasing monopolization of the American economy. Judge Richard Posner's summary statement of the origins of ...
- Biographical
- Acton, Lord
- Adams, John
- Aquinas, Thomas
- Aristotle
- Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen von
- Bastiat, Frédéric
- Bauer, Peter
- Becker, Gary S.
- Bentham, Jeremy
- Branden, Nathaniel
- Bright, John
- Brown, John
- Buchanan, James M.
- Buckle, Henry Thomas
- Burke, Edmund
- Burlamaqui, Jean-Jacques
- Cantillon, Richard
- Childs, Roy A.
- Chodorov, Frank
- Cicero
- Clark, Ed
- Coase, Ronald H.
- Cobden, Richard
- Coke, Edward
- Comte, Charles
- Condorcet, Marquis de
- Constant, Benjamin
- Dicey, Albert Venn
- Diderot, Denis
- Douglas, Frederick
- Dunoyer, Charles
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo
- Epstein, Richard A.
- Ferguson, Adam
- Fisher, Antony
- Foucault, Michel
- Friedman, David
- Friedman, Milton
- Garrison, William Lloyd
- Gladstone, William Ewart
- Godwin, William
- Goldwater, Barry
- Harper, Floyd Arthur “Baldy”
- Hayek, Friedrich A.
- Hazlitt, Henry
- Heinlein, Robert
- Herbert, Auberon
- Hess, Karl
- Hobbes, Thomas
- Hodgskin, Thomas
- Hospers, John
- Humboldt, Wilhelm von
- Hume, David
- Hutcheson, Francis
- Jacobs, Jane
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jouvenel, Bertrand de
- Kant, Immanuel
- Kirzner, Israel M.
- Knight, Frank H.
- La Boétie, Etienne de
- Lane, Rose Wilder
- Lao Tzu
- Las Casas, Bartolomé de
- LeFevre, Robert
- Leggett, William
- Locke, John
- Macaulay, Thomas Babington
- MacBride, Roger Lea
- Madison, James
- Maine, Henry Sumner
- Mandeville, Bernard
- Mason, George
- Mencken, H. L.
- Menger, Carl
- Meyer, Frank S.
- Mill, John Stuart
- Milton, John
- Mises, Ludwig von
- Molinari, Gustave de
- Montaigne, Michel de
- Montesquieu, Charles de Secondât de
- Murray, Charles
- Nathan, Tonie
- Nietzsche, Friedrich
- Nock, Albert Jay
- Nozick, Robert
- Oppenheimer, Franz
- Ortega y Gasset, José
- Orwell, George
- Ostrom, Vincent and Elinor
- Paine, Thomas
- Paterson, Isabel
- Paul, Ron
- Popper, Karl
- Posner, Richard A.
- Pound, Roscoe
- Price, Richard
- Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph
- Röpke, Wilhelm
- Rand, Ayn
- Rawls, John
- Read, Leonard E.
- Ricardo, David
- Rothbard, Murray
- Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
- Say, Jean-Baptiste
- Schumpeter, Joseph
- Senior, Nassau William
- Shaftesbury, Third Earl of
- Sidney, Algernon
- Simon, Julian
- Smith, Adam
- So well, Thomas
- Spencer, Herbert
- Spooner, Lysander
- Stigler, George J.
- Stirner, Max
- Sumner, William Graham
- Szasz, Thomas
- Taft, Robert A.
- Thoreau, Henry David
- Tocqueville, Alexis de
- Tracy, Destutt de
- Tucker, Benjamin R.
- Tullock, Gordon
- Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques
- Voltaire
- Washington, George
- Wicksell, Knut
- Wilberforce, William
- Wollstonecraft, Mary
- Policy
- Abortion
- Affirmative Action
- Antitrust
- Arts and Public Support
- Bioethics
- Black Markets
- Campaign Finance
- Capital Punishment
- Censorship
- Conscription
- Corruption
- Development, Economic
- Drug Prohibition
- Education
- Eminent Domain/Takings
- Environment
- Euthanasia
- Family
- Feminism and Women's Rights
- Foreign Policy
- Free Trade
- Freedom of Speech
- Freedom of Thought
- Gambling
- Genetics
- Globalization
- Health Care
- Illicit Drugs
- Immigration
- Intellectual Property
- Internet
- Interventionism
- Judiciary
- Labor Unions
- Laissez-Faire Policy
- Law and Economics
- Liability
- Market Failure
- Marriage
- Military-Industrial Complex
- Money and Banking
- Paternalism
- Political Parties
- Pornography
- Price Controls
- Privacy
- Privatization
- Psychiatry
- Public Choice Economics
- Racism
- Regulation
- Rent Seeking
- Restitution for Crime
- Retribution for Crime
- Right to Bear Arms
- Rule of Law
- Separation of Church and State
- Sexuality
- Social Security
- Taxation
- Term Limits
- Transportation
- Urban Planning
- War
- War on Terror
- War Powers
- Welfare State
- Topical
- Abolitionism
- American Revolution
- Anarchism
- Anarcho-Capitalism
- Anti-Corn Law League
- Assurance and Trust
- Banking, Austrian Theory of
- Bill of Rights, U.S.
- Bureaucracy
- Capitalism
- Cato's Letters
- Charity/Friendly Societies
- Children
- Cities
- Civil Society
- Civil War, U.S.
- Classical Economics
- Coercion
- Collectivism
- Common Law
- Communism
- Competition
- Conscience
- Consequentialism
- Conservatism
- Conservative Critique of Libertarianism
- Constitution, U.S.
- Constitutionalism
- Contractarianism/Social Contract
- Cosmopolitanism
- Culture
- Decentralism
- Declaration of Independence
- Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
- Delegation
- Democracy
- Division of Labor
- Dutch Republic
- Economics, Austrian School of
- Economics, Chicago School of
- Economics, Experimental
- Economics, Keynesian
- English Civil Wars
- Enlightenment
- Entrepreneurship
- Epicureanism
- Equality
- Evolutionary Psychology
- Existentialism
- Externalities
- Fascism
- Federalism
- Federalists Versus Anti-Federalists
- Freedom
- Free-Market Economy
- French Revolution
- Fusionism
- Glorious Revolution
- Government
- Great Depression
- Humanism
- Imperialism
- Individual Rights
- Individualism, Methodological
- Individualism, Political and Ethical
- Individualist Anarchism
- Industrial Revolution
- Islam
- Italian Fiscal Theorists
- Kleptocracy
- Law Merchant
- Left Libertarianism
- Levellers
- Liberal Critique of Libertarianism
- Liberalism, Classical
- Liberalism, German
- Liberty in the Ancient World
- Liberty, Presumption of
- Limited Government
- Magna Carta
- Marxism
- Material Progress
- Mercantilism
- Minimal State
- Mont Pèlerin Society
- Nationalism
- Natural Harmony of Interests
- Natural Law
- New Deal
- Nonaggression Axiom
- Objectivism
- Peace and Pacifism
- Philosophic Radicals
- Physiocracy
- Positive Liberty
- Praxeology
- Private Property
- Progress
- Progressive Era
- Prohibition of Alcohol
- Puritanism
- Pursuit of Happiness
- Religion and Liberty
- Republicanism, Classical
- Responsibility
- Revolution, Right of
- Rights, Natural
- Rights, Theories of
- Scholastics/School of Salamanca
- Secessionism
- Self-interest
- Slavery in America
- Slavery, World
- Social Darwinism
- Socialism
- Socialist Calculation Debate
- Sociology and Libertarianism
- Spontaneous Order
- State
- Stoicism
- Subsidiarity
- Utilitarianism
- Virtue
- Voluntarism
- Wealth and Poverty
- Whiggism
- Loading...