文档介绍：Vanderbilt University Law School
Public Law & Legal Theory
Working Paper Number 02-01
Law & Economics
Working Paper Number 02-01
Vertical Integration and Media Regulation
in the New Economy
Christopher S. Yoo
This paper can be downloaded without charge from the
Social Science work Electronic Paper Collection:
/abstract=319122
Vertical Integration and Media Regulation in the
New Economy
Christopher S. Yoo†
Recent mergers and mentary have placed renewed
focus on what has long been one of the central issues in media policy:
whether media conglomerates can use vertical integration to harm
competition. This Article seeks to move past previous studies, which have
explored limited aspects of this issue, and apply the full sweep of modern
economic theory to evaluate the regulation of vertical integration in
media-related industries. It does so initially by applying the basic static
efficiency analyses of vertical integration developed under the Chicago
and post-Chicago Schools of antitrust law and economics to three
industries: broadcasting, cable television, and cable modem systems. An
empirical analysis reveals that the structural preconditions recognized by
both Schools as necessary for vertical integration to petition do
not exist in any of these industries. In addition, the cost structure of these
industries suggests that vertical integration may well lead to efficiencies
sufficient to justify allowing such integration to occur.
A dynamic efficiency analysis provides additional reasons for
believing that attempts to regulate vertical integration in these industries
are misguided. Growing reliance pelled access to redress the
problems purportedly caused by vertical integration threatens to dampen
investment incentives in technologically dynamic industries in which such
incentives are particularly important. Not only does