In The Antitrust Paradox, Robert Bork explored many of antitrust's misadventures. Specifically, Bork severely criticized the Robinson-Patman Act, which he characterized as "antitrust's least glorious hour." In this paper, we explore Bork's criticism of the Robinson-Patman Act along with those of other legal scholars and economists. We analyze the central prohibitions of the act and explore their competitive implications. We also show that the act's unfortunate prohibitions have been muted by the antitrust agencies' benign neglect and three recent Supreme Court decisions.

There is concern that licensure requirements impede mobility of licensed professionals to areas of high demand. Nursing has not been immune to this criticism, especially in the context of perceived nurse shortages and large expected future demand. The Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC) was introduced to solve this problem by permitting registered nurses to practice across state lines without obtaining additional licensure. We exploit the staggered adoption of the NLC to examine whether a reduction in licensure-induced barriers alters the nurse labor market. Using data on over 1.8 million nurses and other health care workers we find no evidence that the labor supply or mobility of nurses increases following the adoption of the NLC, even among the residents of counties bordering other NLC states who are potentially most affected by the NLC. This suggests that nationalizing occupational licensing will not substantially reduce labor market frictions.

Bilateral monopoly, Countervailing power, Merger guidelines,

In his classic article, Walter Oi (Oi, Q. J. Econ. 2005; 85: 77-96) analyzed the optimal structure of a two-part tariff. He showed that identical consumer demands result in user fees equal to marginal cost and a lump-sum entry fee equal to the consumer surplus that marginal cost pricing generates. This result appears in managerial economics texts (Managerial Economics (6th edn [451][452][453]. In this note, we extend Oi's analysis to the case of uncertainty. We show that attitudes toward risk influence the optimal two-part tariff. The results from our model describe the two-part tariff that emerges from expected utility maximization.