Games judges don’t play: predatory pricing and strategic reasoning in US antitrust

The paper analyzes the last three decades of debates about predatory pricing in US antitrust law, starting from the literature which followed Areeda and Turner’s 1975 paper and ending in the beginning of this century, upon the Brooke 1993 decision. Special emphasis is given to the game-theoretic approach to predation and to the reasons why this approach has never gained attention in the courtroom. It is argued that, despite their mathematical rigor, the sophisticated stories told by strategic models in order to demonstrate the actual viability of predatory behavior fail to satisfy the criteria which guide the decisions of antitrust courts, in particular their preference for easy-to-apply rules. Therefore, predation cases are still governed by a peculiar alliance between Chicago-style price theory – which, contrary to game theory, considers predatory behavior almost always irrational – and a Harvard-style attention to the operational side of antitrust enforcement.