Behavioral Economics and Antitrust at AAI
Related to Thom’s post on behavioral economics and the problem of conflicting or offsetting biases, the American Antitrust Institute (AAI) held a conference on June 18th 2008 (audio available at the link above). The conference was, as I understand it, designed as a precursor to the AAI’s release of a “Transition Report” to the next administration, offering its own view of antitrust enforcement agenda. The conference kicked off with a keynote from Donald Langevoort (Georgetown), filling in for Cass Sunstein, on behavioral economics and its potential role in antitrust followed by a panel discussion. After listening and reading Thom’s post, and informed by some of the work that I’ve done comparing the empirical predictions of “traditional” microeconomic theory with behavioral economics in consumer contracting markets and finding that the former outperforms the latter, I had a few reactions to what I heard from the keynote and panelists.
