The US antitrust system and recent trends in antitrust enforcement

This paper provides a survey of recent research on the US antitrust system. First we provide an overview of the US antitrust system, describing the ro les of the US Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission and case law. Second, we provide a new econometric trend analysis on the enforcement of US antitrust law, showing that (1) enforcement demonstrates some trend behavior, as well as comovement with business cycles; (2) the time series o f antitrust cases demonstrates two distinct episodes, which we characterize as 'pre-deregulation' and 'post-deregulation;' (3) the time series of gove rnment antitrust filings leads the time series of private antitrust filings . Finally, we describe recent economic research relevant to the area of ant itrust and the impact of this research on US antitrust policy.