Antitrust and technological innovation in the US: ideas, institutions, decisions, and impacts, 1890–2000

Abstract

The history of antitrust policy in the US as it relates to technological innovation exhibits major swings every few decades between favoring concentration and favoring deconcentration. This paper sketches for each period the contending ideas that frame antitrust-technology policy debates, the salience of these ideas in the larger antitrust policy process, the institutions for agenda-setting and decision-making in this area, the policy decisions themselves, and (more speculatively) the impacts of these decisions on technological innovation and industrial development. The paper concludes with a preliminary attempt to identify the cyclical, secular, and static processes that have shaped the history of this policy area and to use this analysis to inform future policy-makers.