Economists Get Serious About the Harm from Monopolies
Economists Struggle to Find Ways to Limit Harm From Monopolies
January 11, 2019 at 12:45 PM ESTIt’s not a game.Photographer: Scott Olson/Getty Images North AmericaThe big story at the annual American Economic Association meeting in Atlanta earlier this month was about the economics profession dealing with its gender problem. But after that, the second-most-interesting debate in economics right now is over antitrust and monopoly power.Two things have pushed the antitrust issue to the fore — economists have started to cite excessive market power as a drag on growth and wages, while energized activists are rising up to challenge lax regulation that allowed a wave of mergers in the past few decades.