Should Antitrust Pursue Multiple Policy Goals?

Brian C. Albrecht and Erik Hovenkamp

George Mason Law Review Forthcoming

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Abstract

Should antitrust abandon the consumer welfare standard and adopt a welfare dashboard that considers broader social values including democracy, inequality, and small business protection? Economic policy research rarely employs such broad welfare frameworks because they are unworkable. Resolving tradeoffs requires assigning welfare weights that are impractical to specify, which inevitably leads to subjective speculation.

Key Insight

Multi-goal antitrust frameworks are unworkable because resolving tradeoffs across goals requires welfare weights that cannot be practically specified.

Keywords

  • antitrust
  • consumer welfare standard
  • competition policy
  • welfare economics

Citation

Brian C. Albrecht and Erik Hovenkamp (2026). "Should Antitrust Pursue Multiple Policy Goals?." George Mason Law Review.

BibTeX

@article{antitrust_multiple_goals,
  title = {Should Antitrust Pursue Multiple Policy Goals?},
  author = {Brian C. Albrecht and Erik Hovenkamp},
  year = {2026},
  journal = {George Mason Law Review},
  url = {https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6556681}
}