Title: Overcoming Impediments to Information Sharing
Abstract:When deciding whether to share information, firms consider their private welfare. Discrepancies between social and private welfare may lead firms excessively to share information to anti-competitive e...When deciding whether to share information, firms consider their private welfare. Discrepancies between social and private welfare may lead firms excessively to share information to anti-competitive ends - in facilitating of cartels and other harmful horizontal practices - a problem both antitrust scholarship and case law have paid much attention to. On the other hand, legal scholars have paid far less attention to the opposite type of inefficiency in information sharing among competitors - namely, the problem of sub-optimal information sharing. This phenomenon can generate significant social costs and is of special importance in network industries because the maintenance of compatibility, a key to producing positive network effects, typically requires information sharing. Understanding the hitherto neglected impact of sub-optimal information sharing is important not only for many areas of antitrust law, but also for developing effective policies towards network industries and critical infrastructures more generally, as well as for improving those procedural rules that concern information exchange among litigating parties.Read More