Representative Activities of the AAI

Our work product is set out in the Archives section of the website in chronological order, starting with the most recent activities. As new activities occur, they are posted on the homepage with a summary and linked to the full text in the Archives section. In addition, we provide a search facility that will assist you in finding relevant materials in our archives, as well as an Antitrust Research facility that presents a user-friendly gateway to antitrust research and a directory to the antitrust community.

ADVOCACY AND ISSUES

A review of our Archives section will reveal the wide range of projects we have undertaken, including, by way of example, issues such as anticompetitive mergers and practices in the food industries and the rise of buyer power as a competition concern; the deregulation of electricity and the problem of containing market power; a series of issues relating to airlines, including mergers, entry barriers, and joint ventures. We have criticized the American Bar Association for standing in the way of multidisciplinary practice; provided Congress with a detailed study of the federal antitrust budget, showing the need for additional funding; worked with the National Association of Attorneys General, individual states and consumer groups on antitrust issues; conducted press conferences on  Microsoft and Intel monopolization cases and participated in and many appellate cases as amicus curiae; and contributed working papers on all issues presented to the public by the Antitrust Modernization Commission.

EDUCATION

We produced "Fair Fight in the Marketplace," a documentary film that is to be shown on public television in 2007, as well as an accompanying educational curriculum for high school classes. These may be viewed at our subsidiary website, www.fairfightfilm.org.

COMMENTARY

In our Archives you will find testimony and speeches we have delivered, articles, essays, book reviews, columns, and op-eds we have written, and even a few monographs. Working Papers are posted as works in progress, which are usually expected to be published elsewhere in revised form later.

WEBSITE: www.antitrustinstitute.org.

The AAI's website (originally designed by Joshua Foer) was early on called "probably the best one-stop antitrust site out there." (Legal Times of Washington, March 5, 2001.) The site you are viewing was redesigned (by a company called Doceus) and launched at the beginning of 2007. We update it regularly and furnish to our e-bulletin list a summary of new material as it is posted. To be sure you are on this list, click the e-bulletin tab at the top of the page. Our information reaches a very high proportion of the antitrust community in the US and key players abroad. As of December, 2006, the AAI website is getting approximately 35,000 visits per month.

ANNUAL NATIONAL CONFERENCE

Our annual national conference  is a showcase for the presentation of new thinking about antitrust and competition policy issues. The papers prepared for this occasion and for our other conferences and symposia are later published in a law review symposium issue. See 62 U. Pitt. L. Rev., 52 Case West. L. Rev., 47 N.Y.L.S. L. Rev., 51 Buff. L.Rev., 72 Antitrust L.J., 35 Real Estate L.J., 80 Tulane L. Rev., and several issues of The Antitrust Bulletin.

The themes of our national conference have been:

2000: "An Agenda for Antitrust in the 21st Century"

2001: "New Economy, New Regime"

2002:  "Stretching the Envelope"

2003:  "Antitrust and Access"

2004:  "Buyer Power"

2005:  "Thinking Creatively about Antitrust Remedies"

2006:  "The IP Grab"

2007:  "The Future of Monopoly and Monopolization"

The national conference also provides an opportunity for the AAI to honor outstanding contributors to the field of antitrust. The AAI Antitrust Achievement Award was presented to:

Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein (2000)

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Robert Pitofsky (2001)

Economist F.M. Scherer (2002)

Economist Alfred Kahn (2003)

Attorney Lloyd Constantine (2004)

Federal Trade Commission Member Thomas Leary (2005)

U.S. Senators Mike DeWine and Herb Kohl (2006).

We also use the occasion of our conference for presentation of the Jerry S. Cohen Award for Antitrust Writing. The recipients have been:

2002:  Joseph Brodley, Patrick Bolton, and Michael Riordan for their article "Predatory Pricing: Strategic Theory and Legal Policy," in 88 Georgetown L. J.

2003: John Connor for his book Global Price Fixing: Our Customers Are the Enemy.

2004: [no award]

2005: Andrew Gavil for his article, "Exclusionary Distribution Strategies By Dominant Firms: Striking A Better Balance," 72 Antitrust L.J. 3

2006: Barry Nalebuff for his article, "Exclusionary Bundling," in 50 Antitrust Bulletin.

SYMPOSIA AND WORKSHOPS

AAI frequently conceives and hosts symposia, workshops, roundtables, and forums on important topics. Each year, we sponsor a workshop on electricity restructuring and antitrust, bringing together the relevant public agencies, private sector, and public interest representatives.

Our Network Access Project included three annual workshops at Northeastern University and produced papers that were published in 2005 by Routledge: Diana L. Moss (ed.), Network Access, Regulation and Antitrust.

Our Business School Project included a forum at Notre Dame’s business school and led to volume 47 of the New York Law School Law Review. Other AAI symposia have focused on defense procurement; retail category management; e-commerce supplier joint ventures; complexity theory; combining horizontal and vertical analysis: implications of the work of Robert L. Steiner; the Antitrust Modernization Commission (with the University of San Francisco Law Review); and the future of aftermarkets. The papers developed for three of these were published as symposium issues of the Antitrust Bulletin.

In 2007, we plan to hold invitational symposia on: electricity restructuring (March 5); improving the antitrust enterprise: enhancing coordination of state agencies and the plaintiffs' bar (with the Center for State Enforcement of Antitrust and Consumer Protection Laws, Inc. (April 18); buyer power (June 20); and our second annual workshop on systems competition (no date yet). These symposia are by invitation only, but we sometimes have limited seating for those who request invitations.