Trust On Trial: How The Microsoft Case Is Reframing The Rules Of Competition - Softcover

McKenzie, Richard B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0738204811 ISBN 13: 9780738204819

Publisher: Basic Books, 2001

Synopsis

Trust on Trial, a hard-hitting examination of competition in the modern marketplace, tackles the monopoly issue head-on. Through the lens of the Microsoft case, the first large-scale antitrust proceedings of the digital age, it challenges the efficacy of modern antitrust enforcement. While testing the appropriateness of new economic assumptions-from network effects to lock-ins-it forces us to ask whether nineteenth-century antitrust law, combined with twentieth-century enforcement norms, is applicable to the twenty-first-century problems of business organizations.

About this title

Review

Is Microsoft truly a classic monopoly, whose aggressive pursuit of markets for Internet browsers and operating systems is harmful to consumers and worthy of government intervention? Or has it actually been a victim of aggressive rivals (led by Sun, Novell, Oracle, and IBM) who called in high-level favors to keep Bill Gates & Company out of the lucrative market for network servers? Richard McKenzie, a noted economist with the University of California at Irvine and the author of more than 20 books, is convinced of the latter. He advances a formidable argument on that behalf in Trust on Trial, which maintains "the Microsoft case has shown--and not for the first time--how politics can taint the antitrust enforcement process." Starting with copies of major U.S. antitrust laws, McKenzie shows how cases such as this eventually may affect consumers in both the short and long term. With some people unconditionally opposed to anything out of Redmond, of course, his thesis won't convince everyone the government proceedings are a sham. But even many of Microsoft's detractors should concede that he makes a compelling point, particularly with his overriding contention that the process is usually political. "More than Microsoft is now on trial: trust in antitrust enforcement is on trial," he says. --Howard Rothman

About the Author

Richard B. McKenzie, Ph.D., is Professor of Economics and Management in the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Irvine. He has written extensively on public policy and his columns have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and Investor's Business Daily.

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0738204811
• ISBN 13: 9780738204819
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336