The recipients of the 19th Annual Jerry S. Cohen Award for Antitrust Scholarship were announced today by Cohen Milstein. Each year, AAI hosts the presentation of this award. The award is administered by the law firm he founded, Cohen Milstein. The award was created through a trust established in honor of the late Jerry S. Cohen, an outstanding trial lawyer and antitrust writer and given each year to the best antitrust writing during the prior year that is consistent with the following standards established by the Board of Trustees of the Jerry S. Cohen Memorial Fund.
Four authors were selected for the 19th Annual Jerry S. Cohen Award for Antitrust Scholarship:
C. Scott Hemphill and Tim Wu won for their article, “Nascent Competitors,” 168 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1879 (2020). The article defines nascent competition as a distinct analytical category and outlines a program of antitrust enforcement to protect it. The authors make the case for antitrust enforcement even where the ultimate competitive significance of an acquisition target is uncertain and explain why a contrary view is mistaken as a matter of policy and precedent.
Nancy Rose and Jonathan Sallet won for their article, “The Dichotomous Treatment of Efficiencies in Horizontal Mergers: Too Much? Too Little? Getting It Right,” 168 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1941 (2020). The article evaluates economic analyses of merger efficiencies and concludes that a substantial body of work casts doubt on their presumptive existence and magnitude. The authors argue this implies that the current standards used by federal antitrust agencies to determine whether to investigate a horizontal merger likely are too permissive and that criticisms of the high burden courts impose on merging parties to show efficiencies are misplaced.
In addition, this year’s award selection committee has conferred six category awards, as follows:
- Best Antitrust Article of 2020 on Vertical Agreements: David Gilo and Yaron Yehezkel, “Vertical Collusion,” 51 Rand. J. of Econ. 133 (2020)
- Best Article of 2020 on Labor Antitrust: Ioana Marinescu and Eric A. Posner, “Why Has Antitrust Law Failed Workers?” 105 Cornell L. Rev. 1343 (2020)
- Best Antitrust Article of 2020 on Tacit Collusion: Jonathan B. Baker and Joseph Farrell, “Oligopoly Coordination, Economic Analysis, and the Prophylactic Role of Horizontal Merger Enforcement,” 168 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1985 (2020)
- Best Article of 2020 on Antitrust History: Herbert Hovenkamp and Fiona Scott Morton, “Framing the Chicago School of Antitrust Analysis,” 168 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1843 (2020)
- Best Article of 2020 on the Rule of Reason: Michael L. Katz and A. Douglas Melamed, “Competition Law as Common Law: American Express and the Evolution of Antitrust ,” 168 U. Pa. L. Rev. 2061 (2020)
- Best Antitrust Article of 2020 on Cartel Enforcement: Christopher R. Leslie, “The Decline and Fall of Circumstantial Evidence in Antitrust Law,” 69 Am. U. L. Rev. 1713 (2020)
- Best Antitrust Article of 2020 on Platforms: John B. Kirkwood, “Antitrust and Two- Sided Platforms: The Failure of American Express,” 41 Cardozo L. Rev. 1805 (2020)
This year’s award selection committee consisted of Zachary Caplan, Senior Counsel at Berger Montague; Warren Grimes, Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School; John Kirkwood, Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law; Christopher Leslie, Professor of Law at University of California, Irvine School of Law; Roger Noll, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Stanford University; Daniel H. Silverman, Partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC; and Daniel A. Small, Partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC. (Professors Kirkwood and Leslie recused themselves from deliberations relating to their own articles.)
