The Role of Antitrust in a Deregulated Environment

Abstract

In recent years, the extent of regulation has been lessened in a number of industries, including among others airlines, stockbrokers, railroads, telephones, cable television, and hydrocarbon producers. This trend toward deregulation can be expected to continue in these industries and extend in others such as motor carriage. Deregulation measures alone cannot guarantee that markets will perform in a competitive fashion. Thus, an increased reliance on antitrust policy is inevitable. This paper focuses on new trends and problems that will confront antitrust enforcers as a result of deregulation. It emphasizes those problems that are either new or take on more significance because of deregulation rather than reiterating well-known problems often treated in a number of textbooks on antitrust. We draw numerous examples from industries most likely to be affected by deregulation. Since no single form of deregulation can be viewed as typical, the role of antitrust will vary from one industry to another.