Cucinotta, Antonio --- "The Vertical Price Fixing Controversy" [2002] ELECD 98; in Cucinotta, Antonio; Pardolesi, Roberto; Van den Bergh, J. Roger (eds), "Post-Chicago Developments in Antitrust Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2002)

Book Title: Post-Chicago Developments in Antitrust Law

Editor(s): Cucinotta, Antonio; Pardolesi, Roberto; Van den Bergh, J. Roger

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781843760016

Section: Chapter 12

Section Title: The Vertical Price Fixing Controversy

Author(s): Cucinotta, Antonio

Number of pages: 29

Extract:

12. The vertical price fixing controversy
Antonio Cucinotta
It is, alas, characteristic of the desiccated formalism which for half a century has
dominated economic thought that those who unguardedly imbibed its atmosphere
soon lost their ability to distinguish between solving a problem of human action and
devising a formal scheme within which it can be made to vanish from our sight.
(Ludwig Lachmann)


CHAMBERLIN
This is not a piece of economic theory. Antitrust students ask economic theo-
rists questions getting, more often than not, too many answers not entirely
consistent one with another. Since the vertical price fixing problem is so theo-
retically controversial (or, as it might equally be said, since the vertical price
fixing controversy is so highly theoretical), this chapter gathers some econo-
mists' answers on the issue together with some points of view on the founda-
tions of these answers, hoping that a better understanding of the problems
being examined may help. It treats both as (more or less relevant) evidence
about the sources of the controversy. Hence this is a piece on economic theory.
But, as far as the more general level of the economic discourse is concerned,
collected evidence does not claim to corroborate any thesis. The chapter will
look at the evidence as if a starting assumption about a crisis in economic
theory could prove to be sound.
Until recent years, vertical price fixing (resale price maintenance or RPM)
analysis moved from the assumption that this business practice is a fact of
economic ...