Markets and Antitrust Before and After Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism is waning. Activist reformers in antitrust and finance, who reject the long dominant principles of efficient markets are turning back to history for usable models and political perspective. In antitrust, there is a revival of structural models from the mid-twentieth century and political theories of power from the Progressive Era. In finance, there’s a renewed interest in postKeynesian theory. This panel asks how business and policy historians can help situate and make sense of the current reform era. First, we return to theories of market power and finance from the 1940s to the 1960s and show how they were displaced price theories that shifted attention to increasingly abstract models of efficiency. Second, we explain how the economic models, which claimed transhistorical objectivity and determinacy, always fell short, because of changing historical conditions and the unpredictability of practice. Finally, we show how current efforts to rethink markets and reform policy draw upon and succeed earlier models of industrial organization and financial behavior. Laura Phillips Sawyer will trace the development of structural models of market power from the 1940s to the 1960s, showing how they were situated within economic challenges of their era. Gerald Berk draws on historical concepts from Karl Polyani and Michel Foucault’s lectures on neoliberalism to make sense of today’s antitrust reformers. Fernando Chaddad and David Sicilia trace flaws in the Efficient Market theory of finance into economist Paul Samuelson’s trading firm – the Commodities Corporation – where it failed. Chief Economist for the Open Markets Institute (which has led current efforts at antitrust reform) will comment. Together, the papers and commentary promise to make sense of market and regulatory theory and practice after neoliberalism by putting it in conversation with ideas, policies, and practices before it.