The great reversal : how America gave up on free markets /

Philippon (Stern School of Business, NYU) begins this book with a question: why are cell phone rates in the European Union lower than rates in the US? The same question can be applied to telecommunication rates in general, including the price for accessing the internet. Data Philippon collected show that during the 1990s, this situation was very different. EU nations had 10--15 percent higher telecom rates than the US. Something changed in 2000 to make telecom prices for EU consumers fall below prices for US consumers. The correlation, Philippon found, was that EU countries exhibited a significant drop in the level of telecom industry concentration, and concentration in the US telecom sector increased. The key turning point was EU deregulation, which introduced new competition into the telecom sector, breaking the existing oligopoly and forcing a sharp reduction in telecom prices. Philippon notes a similar dynamic in other industries. Conclusion: decreased market competition leads to higher prices, more income inequality, and lost overall national income. This volume joins Jonathan Baker's The Antitrust Paradigm: Restoring a Competitive Economy (CH, Apr'20, 57-2648) in addressing these issues. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates; graduate students; general readers. --Satyananda J. Gabriel, Mount Holyoke College