What is the Future of the Consumer Welfare Standard?

Antitrust policy has reached what appears to be an inflection point—both in academia and in policy-making—that may lead to once in a generation changes in its scope and intensity. The goal of our 2022 Conference Antitrust: What’s Next?  is to take stock of the ongoing debates, understand the strengths and weaknesses of the different antitrust-reform camps, and discuss and inform the future of competition policy in the United States and abroad.

What is the Future of the Consumer Welfare Standard?
It is difficult to find a more central concept to US antitrust enforcement than the Consumer Welfare Standard. For its defenders, the Standard centers antitrust policy on a clear, coherent goal—preventing it from being ‘hijacked’ by market losers. For others, the Standard is itself the tool that enabled the ‘hijacking’ of antitrust policy away from its goals of protecting both the competitive process and economic liberty. Some want to keep it, others reform it, and some want to eliminate it. In this panel we will hear from and discuss the multiple different views. Paraphrasing the dictum: “The Consumer Welfare Standard is dead, long live the Consumer Welfare Standard?”

Moderator: Luigi Zingales, University of Chicago
Alden Abbott, George Mason University
Doha Mekki, United States Department of Justice
Fiona Scott Morton, Yale University
Zephyr Teachout, Fordham University