Bundled Discounts, Exclusive Dealing, and Liability Rules: Thoughts on Crane and Lambert on Bundled Discounts
Dan Crane and Thom (who has promised more remarks!) have now both posted their prepared remarks for the Section 2 hearings panel on bundled discounts. Both call for bright-line, administrable liability rules for all forms of unilateral exclusionary conduct, and have important things to say about designing antitrust rules for bundled discounts. Both are worth reading in their entirety. Administrable rules that sensibly balance Type I and II errors are certainly an indisputably admirable goal for antitrust analysis and bundled discounts have proven to be a particularly tricky form of conduct for Section 2 analysis. Despite all of the agreement around here between Thom, Dan and I on the design of antitrust rules in a world of costly Type I errors, I think I have found a topic upon which I can at least offer a mild dissent (or at least a different perspective) regarding the usefulness of the analogy of various anticompetitive theories of bundled discounting practices to exclusive dealing.
