NCJ Number
108896
Date Published
1987
Length
369 pages
Annotation
This doctoral dissertation studies the origin and investigation of all cases filed by the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 1946 through 1970.
Abstract
The cases are studied to obtain the following kinds of data: means of detection and methods of investigation; enforcement patterns and the economic distribution of offenses; interaction among victims, offenders, and officials; interagency relations; principal evidence; and the nature and severity of sanctions. Legal encounters are reconstructed by using previously classified internal documents and interviews with present and former officials. The study reveals that the principal trade violations were collusion, monopolization, and anticompetitive mergers and acquisitions. About 75 percent of all antitrust cases began with information supplied by informants and complainants from outside the agency. Price-fixing conspiracies were discovered during grand jury investigations and illegal mergers were originally reported in the media. The author details how criminal indictments were framed; what kinds of penalties were proposed; and what the enforcement posture of the agency was. He concludes that antitrust law enforcement during the period from 1946 to 1970 effectively prohibited monopoly, economic coercion, overt collusion, and large horizontal mergers. 239 references, appendixes, and tabular material.