Antitrust: Ideology or economics?

Dominick T. Armentano's book, Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Policy Failure, 2nd ed., has serious limitations as a scholarly work. Monopolistic price‐raising is even more objectionable under plausible interpretations of Armentano's subjectivist criterion than in the standard case, which assumes equal subjective value for all consumers’ dollar expenditures. Armentano's historical review of leading antitrust cases is also faulty. His evidence on the alleged failure of price‐fixing schemes is defective, and his approach to judging whether monopoly power existed proceeds from an inappropriately static theory.