Chicago and Its Alternatives

Professor Wiley provides explanations different from my own for two judicial decisions, Aspen Skiing Co. v. Aspen Highlands Skiing Corp. 3 and Bonjorno v. Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp.4 The gist of his argument is that one can easily explain the defendants' conduct in these decisions in a way that shows it to be competitive, or at least competitively harmless. I have no quarrel with that observation, but find it generally irrelevant. My descriptions and explanations of the facts were drawn from the opinions. There may be other explanations, but at this stage they no longer count. A disturbing thing about Chicago School antitrust is that too often a Chicago School economist is required to explain to businessmen why what they have been doing for a long time is a good idea. For example, resale price maintenance was occurring and raising antitrust issues for a half century before Telser told us that it is efficient because it controls free riding.5 It seems inconceivable that so many business persons engaged in resale price maintenance and exposed themselves to antitrust liability6 without knowing why they were doing it.