Handbook on International Antitrust Economics, Roger D. Blair and D. Daniel Sokol (eds.), Chapter 1, Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 1-39
This chapter provides a unified framework for conducting a rule-of-reason investigation into the competitive effects of various exclusionary practices, including pricing conduct such as predation and bundling, as well as “exclusionary conditions” such as exclusive dealing and other restrictions on customers’ interactions with rivals. The precedential legal cases governing a wide range of exclusionary practices are compatible with the economic logic upon which the framework is built. By focusing on the most common and important mechanism through which exclusionary conduct might harm competition, namely by weakening a rival and thereby diminishing its threat as a future competitor, the chapter identifies tractable strategies for determining whether such conduct is anticompetitive or procompetitive.