Thurman Arnold Project Offers an Online Primer in Antitrust
The video series is intended for law students, journalists, or anyone who is interested in antitrust enforcement.
Antitrust enforcement is frequently in the news, as governments grapple with powerful firms in technology and other industries. A new collection of online videos from Yale’s Thurman Arnold Project offers a wide-ranging introduction to antitrust economics for law students, attorneys, and journalists—as well as engaged citizens who want to understand how antitrust law shapes society.
The videos are part of a larger antitrust syllabus, which includes the videos and curated readings on a variety of topics, including the history of antitrust; anti-competitive structures like monopolies and cartels; explorations of competition in the technology, pharmaceutical, and agriculture industries; and antitrust remedies. The syllabus is intended to inform the structure of a course on antitrust law, but, the creators emphasize, it can be broken into various modules depending on the interests of students and the instructor.
In the videos, Yale faculty describe the economic concepts used in antitrust enforcement, illustrated with graphics and animations. The videos were created with support from the Sloan Foundation.
In the introductory video, Yale SOM’s Fiona Scott Morton, founder of the Thurman Arnold Project, says that the purpose of the series is ultimately to improve the lives of consumers. “When we can use the economics correctly, we get the right answer,” she tells the audience. “And when we get the right answer, we can enforce the antritrust laws in a way that helps all consumers, and that includes all of you. Then we can have markets that deliver to all of us lower prices, higher quality, more innovation, and we have lots of choices.”