Few revolutions in economics have been as under-covered in general literature as the emergence and development of competition theory and policymaking.

Political threats to break up the tech giants or restrain Russian gas pipelines make the headlines while academic lawyers churn out textbooks on 130 years of precedent and practicing lawyers test its limits.

What has been missing is an up-to-date, general legislative and intellectual history of how and why politicians, lawyers, and economists in capitalist democracies decided they needed to step in and correct the market. Why did this happen first in the US in that crucial quarter-century preceding the first world war?

The Foundations of Antitrust: Events, Ideas, and Doctrines by Gregory Werden (Carolina Academic Press, 2020) fills that gap, examines the overlaps between legal innovation and common law, and busts a few myths en route.

From 1977 until his retirement in 2019, Gregory Werden worked in the Antitrust Division of the US Department of Justice – most recently as Senior Economic Counsel. A PhD economist from the University of Wisconsin, he has published extensively on antitrust policy.

*The author's own book recommendation is Trusts: The Recent Combinations in Trade, Their Character, Legality and Mode of Organization, and the Rights, Duties and Liabilities of Their Managers and Certificate Holders by William W Cook (Gale - Making of Modern Law, 2020; originally published by L. K. Strouse, 1888)

Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley advisors (a division of Energy Aspects).

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