1 ANTITRUST: DISCUSSION OF IDEAS AMONG LEGISLATORS AND WHO HAS TO FOLLOW THE LAW XVIe colloque Charles Gide. 14-16 abril 2016 Strasbourg, France Author: Ana Rosado. Complutense University of Madrid, Spain
[email protected] Abstract The internalization of market transactions was the strategy of the majority of American companies at the end of the nineteenth century in order to increase the productivity and to reduce costs. Until 1880 the biggest American firms internalized suppliers and since 1890 included distribution, at the same time, the entrepreneurs amassed impressive fortunes. As a result the problem of trust became a moral issue, supported by the fact that society wealth has been transferred from customers to richest men. In this context a few debates took place among the American economists: first, a theoretical debate referred to prevention of monopolization of industry; second debate about the convenience of reform of the institutions and the origins of the FTC, and finally the control of economy by states. In this paper we tried to shade light about the economic arguments for and against to restrain the power of big American companies. Keywords: Antitrust, American History of Economic Thought, Markets Imperfections, Competition and Law. JEL code: B-21; K-21; D-43 2 I. INTRODUCTION At the end of the XIX century American firms shaped their structure into multidivisional companies and some of them became trusts. Many authors began to be worried about the size that these companies had reached; one of these authors was John Bates Clark. Indeed, he gave his name to the prelude price for the Nobel Prize for Economics.