An outfit called the American Antitrust Institute is soliciting statements from presidential candidates on antitrust policy. So far, Barack Obama and John Edwards have submitted their views. See GMU law professor Josh Wright for comments on Obama&#82…

As to why I would post when Obama doesn’t set forth a real policy to discuss, I suppose my answer is that bit is fair game to take seriously a policy statement put out by a presidential candidate.

Now, we both agree that we cannot know his entire policy from the 2 pager. So what do we know from the 2 pager? That an Obama antitrust regime will bring more cases and that some of those will be in the health care market. You describe the statement about the healthcare market as a “test case,” but isn’t it really just naming an entire industry and saying that perceived high prices in that industry are an antitrust problem. This doesn’t tell us anything about the policy. It gives us zero idea about how Obama would change the substantive antitrust analysis and thnk about cases relative to the status quo. All we know is that there are likely to be more lawsuits because more activity is better.

You take me to task for not analyzing his policy. That is fair enough. But I don’t think there is much to analyze there. If you are disappointed that I went on to comment publicly about this because the statement said nothing, I guess I can understand that too. But I think I’m entitled to take the document seriously. And to the extent that one takes “more is better” as a serious antitrust policy, I think it is worth criticizing on the grounds that the statement appears to have no appreciation for error costs (i.e. that the only error costs that should influence policy are false negatives). I said that in the post.

The reason I wrote that I did not want my criticism of the “more is better” approach to be taken as too critical is that (as I note in the post), Obama left himself some outs by mentioning that he would only stop or restructure mergers that harmed consumer welfare. Again, that is not a policy. It is just roughly restating the legal standard under Section 7.

Ideally, I would like one of these statements to make a concrete statement about how their antitrust analysis would differ from the status quo not just that they will bring more cases. What type of cases? What is the current administration doing in its merger review that Obama would do differently in terms of the substantive analysis? When and if that happens, I will do my best to respond in greater detail and provide more analysis. But in the meantime, is it not fair game to comment on what is missing from the statement?

All you did with this supposed “criticism of the Obama statement” was raise, as you concede, questions that aren’t answered by the two paragraph statement of the policy. Then, you did not even attempt to answer these questions. Why even publicly comment on the policy, then, considering your admitted ignorance in the area? Your comment does nothing more than potentially – not certainly – poke holes in the policy, based on certain empirical assumptions on which you can shed no light.

In fact, there was quite a bit of substance in Obama’s statement, given its brevity. He provided a test case in the antitrust context and drew some conclusions, the basis for which you could have commented on and disputed. Yet, you didn’t. Again, why comment publicly at all, given your level of familiarity with the area? I.e., what does it add to the debate but the implication – which you admit you have no basis for – that Obama might be wrong?

I shouldn’t have to add, but will, that I don’t think his policy is necessarily correct. I was just disappointed in the analysis underlying your “criticism.”

Presidential candidates John Edwards and Barack Obama have posted responses to questions on antitrust policy to the American Antitrust Institute. Josh Wright comments on their…

You’re critique, based on a reasonable analytical standard, gives Obama too much credit. I think he could have told his target audience that mergers should be approved by a government-run coin-toss or lottery, and gotten the same reaction.

His example of health care is particularly laughable. One can think of dozens of ways to increase competition in those markets having nothing to do with antitrust enforcement. How about letting me buy the health insurance package that my cousin in Maryland can get?