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Today, the American Antitrust Institute (AAI) released the entrepreneurship and innovation chapter of its forthcoming Transition Report on Competition Policy to the 45th President of the United States. The chapter is entitled Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Antitrust. This release is the fourth in a series of previews in which the AAI will make select chapters of the transition report available for download in advance of the November election.

"As concentration of economic power in key sectors, industries, and markets has grown, barriers to entry have increased. In light of this, a key priority for the competition community is to promote the important role of antitrust in facilitating entrepreneurial growth," said AAI President Diana Moss.

"This chapter is full of thoughtful and practical solutions to a big, important problem that has become a key organizational priority for AAI," said the Transition Report’s editor, AAI Associate General Counsel Randy Stutz.

The entrepreneurship and innovation chapter of the Transition Report coincides with the rollout of the AAI’s Report on Entrepreneurship and Antitrust. The report is a multidisciplinary series of papers that examines the important relationship between entrepreneurial activity and competition policy and enforcement, which is key to an economy that revolves around job creation, investment, innovation, higher living standards, consumer benefits, and long-term vibrancy.

The entrepreneurship and innovation chapter makes a variety of recommendations to the next administration to ensure that antitrust policy effectively promotes dynamic efficiency and entrepreneurial growth, including the following:

• Devote greater scrutiny to claims of efficiencies or synergies between merging parties (but be mindful of counter-incentive effects where startups are being bought by larger competitors).
• Implement, through legislation or through judicial action, various procedural reforms that promise to speed up antitrust litigation, Section 2 monopolization cases in particular. Restoring legislation allowing for expedited Supreme Court review of Section 2 cases should be considered, and judges and government litigators should explore the expanded use of certain expediting procedures used in the Microsoft case.
• Utilize antitrust enforcement to prevent private interference by patent owners to block regulation that promotes welfare-enhancing innovation.
• Re-assert antitrust primacy or at least eliminate preemption of the antitrust laws in areas where other regulatory schemes may be prevalent (such as in the securities arena), and more widely with respect to all other activities that may be overseen by federal regulatory agencies.

Visit the new Transition Report section of the AAI website for a free download of the entire chapter and links to the AAI’s related work. For more information on the AAI’s Report on Entrepreneurship and Antitrust, visit the new Entrepreneurship section of the AAI website.

The AAI Presidential Transition Report makes policy recommendations based on the AAI’s mission of promoting competition that protects consumers, businesses, and society. The Report is one way the AAI serves the public through education, research, and advocacy on the benefits of competition and the use of antitrust enforcement as a vital component of national and international competition policy.

Contacts:

Randy Stutz, Associate General Counsel, American Antitrust Institute
(202) 905-5420
rstutz@antitrustinstitute.org

Diana Moss, President, American Antitrust Institute
(202) 536-3408
dmoss@antitrustinstitute.org