The Nanny State Goes Shopping

The Nanny State Goes Shopping

Antitrust used to ask a simple question: are firms making consumers worse off? Increasingly, it asks a different one: are consumers making the “wrong” choices? The consumer welfare standard (CWS) often draws criticism as narrow or inattentive to broader concerns. That familiar critique rests on a basic misunderstanding of what the standard is designed to do. At bottom, the disagreement concerns what should trigger antitrust intervention. Under t…