Regulating Big Business
Antitrust in Great Britain and America, 1880–1990

This book explores the development of big business and the antitrust response in a comparative context.

Tony Freyer (Author)

9780521352079, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 March 1992

416 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.9 cm, 0.716 kg

"...the fullest treatment of the emergence of the policy in Britain that has yet appeared." Donald Dewey, History of Political Economy

In the late nineteenth century a new form of capitalism emerged in Great Britain and the United States. Before the revolutions in communication and transportation, the owners of firms managed the processes of production, distribution, transportation and communication personally. By the end of the century, however, technological innovation and mass markets fostered the development of large-scale corporate structures, leading to a separation between owners and operators. In this new form of capitalist enterprise managers were increasingly the principal decision makers. This economic transformation spawned social and political tensions which compelled the public and policy makers to decide upon an appropriate response to big business. A primary focus of public discourse was antitrust. This book explores the development of big business and the antitrust response in a comparative context.

Introduction
1. The response to big business: the formative era, 1880–1914
2. The divergence of economic thought
3. The political response
4. The courts respond to big business
5. The impact of World War I, 1914–1921
6. Tentative convergence, 1921–1948
7. A British antimonopoly policy emerges, 1940–1948
8. Uneven convergence since World War II
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Business & management [KJ]