Economists Robert W Crandall and Clifford Winston have asked a very important question: Has all of this effort enhanced consumer welfare? They conclude that the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission would best serve the economy by following a policy of benign neglect in cases of monopolization, proposed mergers, and efforts by firms to exploit technological gains by lowering price The economists conclude that antitrust actions should be limited to the most blatant cases of pricefixing or mergers that would result in monopolies In contrast, law professor Jonathan Baker argued in the same journal that such a minimalist approach could be harmful to consumer welfare One argument he makes is that antitrust laws and their enforcement create a deterrence effect A recent paper by Orley Ashenfelter and Daniel Hosken analyzed the impact of five mergers in the consumer products industry that seemed to be most problematic for antitrust enforcement agencies In four of the five cases prices rose following the mergers and in the fifth case the merger had little effect on price While they not conclude that this small study should be used to determine the appropriate level of government enforcement of antitrust policy, they state that those who advocate less intervention should note that the price effects were not negative, as they would have been if these mergers were producing cost decreases and passing them on to consumers Those advocating more intervention should note that the price increases they observed after these mergers were not very large Sources: Orley Ashenfelter and Daniel Hosken, “The Effect of Mergers on Consumer Prices: Evidence from Five Selected Cases,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper13859, March 2008; James B Baker, Attributed to Libby Rittenberg and Timothy Tregarthen Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books/ Saylor.org 854