Professor Avishalom Tor will present, Some Lessons of Behavioral Antitrust: Theories of Harm, Enforcement Practices, and Competition Law Adjudication, at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition in Brussels, Belgium, on February 17, 2017.
Theories of Harm, Enforcement Practices, and Competition Law Adjudication
Abstract: “Behavioral antitrust”—the application to competition law of empirical evidence showing how the actual behavior of real consumers and managers of business firms departs systematically and predictably from strict rationality—bears important lessons for a broad range of antitrust issues. Professor Tor's comments will illustrate the implications of behavioral findings for predicting market behavior and its competitive consequences in areas including horizontal and vertical restraints, abuse of dominance, and merger enforcement. After demonstrating how the behavioral evidence necessitates a reevaluation of standard theories of harm, he will conclude by outlining some practical lessons of behavioral antitrust for enforcement and adjudication practices.