AEI Press

Antitrust consent decrees in theory and practice; why less is more.

In what began as a commissioned research study for the Microsoft Corporation, Epstein (law, U. of Chicago Law School) provides an analysis of the role of consent decrees in US antitrust laws. He provides case studies of the prohibition against entry into new lines of business in Swift & Co. v. United States, the contractual restrictions on and eventual breakup of United Shoe Machinery, and government supervision of the licensing arrangements for musical works — and compares these cases to the breakup of the Bell telephone system and recent litigation involving Microsoft. Epstein concludes that new decrees should be carefully tailored to remedy discreet, identified violations, and that broad "structural" decrees tend to do far more harm than good. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Competitive equity; a better way to organize mutual funds.

According to the authors (of the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution), the current regulatory structure governing mutual funds in the United States prevents the development of price competition that should lower the costs to fund investors. Examining the "expense ratios" (adviser's fees and management costs deducted from the assets of the fund) of 811 equity funds, they find that regulation mandated involvement by boards of directors in the approval of advisers' fees and other expenses leads to a price divergence of up to 300% as opposed to the UK's fund price divergence of only 50%. They trace this disparity to "cost-plus" processes used by boards to assess fees and urge rate deregulation for advisers under the legal structure of the "managed investment trust," in which boards would be eliminated and advisers would set their own fees. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Federal preemption; states' powers, national interests.

Debates over federal preemption pit consumer advocates, plaintiff's attorneys, and state officials worried about federal regulators interfering with states' powers to police corporate misconduct against corporations and federal agencies insisting that preemption is needed to guard against unwarranted state interference with the national economy. Believing that the debate over preemption needs to be informed by an understanding of broad institutional concerns and regulatory detail, as well as the interplay between them, Epstein (law, U. of Chicago) and Greve (director of the Federalism Project at the American Enterprise Institute) bring together practicing lawyers and legal theorists from different sides of the debate in order to develop a picture of the broad scope and detailed nuances of the preemption doctrine and the controversies it generates. The papers discuss the historical evolution of preemption, extant preemption law in such policy arenas as drug regulation, telecommunications, banking and corporate law, environmental policy, and product liability; and overarching questions such as preemption's internal logic, its relationship with federalism, and comparative understandings of the relationship between legal systems of different levels of government in the European Union. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Russia's revolution; essays 1989-2006.

It is more the de-revolution that Aron (Russian studies, American Enterprise Institute) discusses in 21 essays describing events and trends in the Soviet Union then Russia for 15 yeas from what he characterizes as the cleansing firestorm of glasnost to Vladimir Putin's increasingly risky post-2003 restoration. He wrote the essays during the periods they recount, and so provide a diary of his impressions. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)