New from Harvard University Press:
The Great Levelers: Capitalism and Competition in the Court of Law, by
Brett Christophers (Uppsala University). A description from the Press:
For all the turmoil that roiled
financial markets during the Great Recession and its aftermath, Wall
Street forecasts once again turned bullish and corporate profitability
soared to unprecedented heights. How does capitalism consistently
generate profits despite its vulnerability to destabilizing events that
can plunge the global economy into chaos?
The Great Leveler elucidates the crucial but underappreciated role of the law in regulating capitalism’s rhythms of accumulation and growth.
Brett Christophers argues that capitalism requires a delicate
balance between competition and monopoly. When monopolistic forces
become dominant, antitrust law steps in to discourage the growth of
giant corporations and restore competitiveness. When competitive forces
become dominant, intellectual property law steps in to protect corporate
assets and encourage investment. These two sets of laws—antitrust and
intellectual property—have a pincer effect on corporate profitability,
ensuring that markets become neither monopolistic, which would lead to
rent-seeking and stagnation, nor overly competitive, which would drive
down profits.
Christophers pursues these ideas through a close study of the
historical development of American and British capitalist economies from
the late nineteenth century to the present, tracing the relationship
between monopoly and competition in each country and the evolution of
legal mechanisms for keeping these forces in check. More than an
illuminating study of the economic role of law, The Great Leveler is a bold and fresh dissection of the anatomy of modern capitalism.
A few blurbs:
“The Great Leveler is a brilliant
rethinking of a century and a half of U.S. and English economic history.
It is a must read for all scholars of political economy. Focusing on
the dialectic between monopoly and competition, Christophers
uncovers four alternating periods that are characterized either by too
much or too little competition. He sees the period from 1975 to the
present as one of runaway monopolization, and questions whether national
legal systems still have the power and authority to play a critical
balancing role.”—Fred Block
“The book does a masterful job of weaving a
rich skein of a complex whole (capitalism and its movement through time
and space) into an accessible and convincing narrative.”—Susan K. Sell
More information is available
here.
