An article written by ILSR Co-Director Stacy Mitchell has been named “Best Antitrust and Small Business Article” as part of the annual Jerry S. Cohen Award for Antitrust Scholarship.
The piece was published by ILSR as Monopoly Power and the Decline of Small Business and also appeared in the academic journal The Antitrust Bulletin under the title “The View from the Shop—Antitrust and the Decline of America’s Independent Businesses.”
The Cohen Award was created through a trust established in honor of the late Jerry S. Cohen, a highly regarded trial lawyer and antitrust writer. The 2017 award committee consisted of Zachary Caplan, Warren Grimes, John Kirkwood, Robert Lande, Christopher Leslie, Roger Noll, and Dan Small. Information on other articles recognized by the committee can be found here.
Mitchell’s article notes that small, independent businesses have declined sharply in both numbers and market share across many sectors of the economy. It argues that this decline is owed, at least in part, to anticompetitive behavior by large, dominant corporations. Drawing on examples in pharmacy, banking, telecommunications, and retail, it finds that big companies routinely use their size and their economic and political power to undermine their smaller rivals and exclude them from markets.
The article presents three reasons to bring a commitment to fair and open markets for small businesses back into antitrust enforcement and public policy, and concludes by outlining several specific steps for doing so.
Read a summary of the report.
Download the full report.
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