During the last few weeks we have looked at types of competitive markets. Monopolies are in a peculiar situation of market power where they have the opportunity to influence prices and competition by controlling price and quantity. We briefly discussed antitrust laws in Ch 2 and will discuss them in depth in Chapter 16.

The Anti-trust laws in the US are dated from the late 1800's and consist primarily of 3 pieces of legislation; the Sherman Act of 1890, in 1914, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act, and the Clayton Act. You can find more information at the FTC website link below. The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice are tasked with enforcing the anti-trust laws.

http://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/antitrust-laws

The first notable and one of the most famous Antitrust cases was the Standard Oil case, decided in 1911, over 20 years after the Sherman Act was passed. Since the Standard Oil case, there have been thousands of investigations and charges filed. Among them are well known cases such as US steel, American Telephone and Telegraph (Bell System) and the Amoco/BP merger. More recently Microsoft, Apple, the Verizon/MCI merger and the NCAA have been investigated for antitrust violations. While investigations and FTC actions can bring about an organizational break-up or a change in the way an organization does business, it is common for a suit to bring no or little action.

For this paper, Identify an antitrust case, explain the violation the case was brought forth on, organization(s) involved, some details of the case, and the disposition of the case.

• Your paper should be 3-5 pages in length and have 3-5 works cited.
• Papers should be submitted to the dropbox via Turnitin.com.
• While Wikepedia is generally not considered a credible source for research, it can be a good source for identifying anti-trust cases.