Invitational Symposium: A Multidisciplinary Examination of Efficiency

This year’s AAI Invitational Symposium, A MULTIDISCIPLINARY EXAMINATION OF EFFICIENCY, will highlight cutting-edge thinking and developments concerning antitrust approaches to efficiencies. The program is motivated by the growing tension surrounding efficiencies created by market concentration in key sectors and areas such as airlines, food, media, and distribution. The discussion will frame key questions about the role that efficiencies have come to play in antitrust analysis and focus on how enforcement may increasingly be confronted with the “inefficiencies” of consolidation, vertical restraints, and other forms of strategic competitive conduct.

The shifting landscape in many important sectors of the economy highlights the generation- old focus of antitrust on balancing efficiencies against anticompetitive effects. Claims of efficiencies have expanded beyond traditional economies of scale, scope, and coordination to include various and wide-ranging organizational and managerial efficiencies. At the same time, post-mortems of mergers that have produced adverse effects for competition and consumers are leading to intensified scrutiny of ex ante claims of efficiencies. Skepticism of efficiency-based justifications for vertical restraints (e.g., avoidance of free-riding externalities) has also increased. The extent to which competitive harm in some markets might be offset by benefits elsewhere (i.e., out-of-market efficiencies) is also being increasingly discussed by antitrust enforcers.

The June 18 Invitational Symposium will adopt a multidisciplinary approach to evaluate efficiencies in the antitrust context. The morning panel will begin the dialog on efficiencies and inefficiencies, with an assessment of economic approaches and contexts. As the day progresses, discussion will incorporate perspectives from other important disciplines, including marketing and strategic management. The day will conclude with an unpacking of the issues in an antitrust enforcement context and a roundtable discussion of major themes and implications.

The symposium will be of special interest to scholars, consultants, and practitioners from antitrust and economics, as well as interested members from related fields (e.g., business, strategic management, marketing, etc.). The symposium will also serve as a warm-up for the AAI’s national conference on the following day, this year titled “The Inefficiencies of Efficiency.”