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AT&T's divestiture was the largest corporate reorganization in history and has had international repercussions. It was a major development in American economic policy, and a prominent part of the deregulation movement of the late 1970s. This study reveals the internal decision-making process at AT&T and explains how private and public interests combined to shape corporate and public policy in late 20th-century America. Temin weaves the strands of politics, economics, business, and law into an accessible narrative history that will be of interest to the general reader who wants to know about government business interaction and how it affects American citizens. Temin portrays divestiture as a great experiment in public policy, competition, openness, and international policy. He concludes that the experiment has been a mix of deliberate design and uncontrollable forces whose outcome was not foreseen.
On January 8, 1982, the AT&T divestiture consent decree was announced. A company with $150 billion in assets--more than General Motors, General Electric, U.S. Steel, Eastman Kodak, and Xerox combined--the country's second largest employer with over a million employees, and the nations most widely held security with over three million shareholders, was to be broken up on the first day of 1984. Many economists, government officials, people in the telecommunications industry, and media observers predicted dire consequences for "the best telephone system in the world." Years later, some experts claim the divestiture has been a great success. According to present AT&T Chairman and CEO, Robert Allen, long-distance rates have dropped, local rates have not increased as dramatically as predicted, more households are on the network, other long-distance and equipment companies now effectively compete wit hAT&T, and consumers have received more choices in products, better values, and lower prices. Others are far less positive in their evaluation of divestiture's effects. After the Breakup: Assessing the New Post-AT&T Divestiture Era describes the current state of telecommunications and how the industry has changed in the first decade of divestiture. Drawn from a major project organized by the Center for Telecommunications and Information Studies at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business, this volume offers an objective account of divestiture.
Analyses the effects of the 1984 break-up of AT&T and the trends towards competition in the US telecommunications sector that preceded it.
In 1984, the Department of Justice settled its antitrust caseagainst AT&T. The agreement, embedded in the Modification ofFinal Judgment, led to a divestiture of the local telephoneexchanges from AT&T to the Regional Bell Operating Companies(known as the Baby Bells ). This agreement gave unprecedented powerover a major US industry to one man, Judge Harold Greene of the USDistrict Court of the District of Columbia. The Baby Bells couldnot enter any line of business without approval from Judge Greene.With technological change it became increasingly desirable for theBaby Bells to enter different lines of business, but each attemptwas subject to legal challenge and lengthy, costly litigation. In1994, the Baby Bells mounted a major legal challenge to theModification of Final Judgement (MFJ). As part of their strategy,they asked leading scholars in the field to examine the costs andbenefits of the MFJ and provide evidence in the form of affidavitsregarding its effect. Using a cost-benefit framework, theconclusion of the analysis is that the MFJ should be vacated andcompetition should be allowed in the industry. DeregulatingTelecommunications draws together a group of leading practitionersand academics in the fields of regulation, industrial organisationand antitrust to explore: A cost-benefit analysis of the 1984 AT&T antitrust settlement Theoretical and empirical studies that analyse the results of thesettlement from its inception in 1984 to 1994 An explanation for the recent policy decisions to reduce theamount of regulation in telecommunications Analysis vital to predicting the results of any deregulation intelecommunications in the future This book will prove invaluable to economists interested intelecommunications, as well as those interested in antitrust and in regulation.
When it was first published a quarter of a century ago, Richard Posner's exposition and defense of an economic approach to antitrust law was a jeremiad against the intellectual disarray that then characterized the field. As other perspectives on antitrust law have fallen away, Posner's book has played a major role in transforming the field of antitrust law into a body of economically rational principles largely in accord with the ideas set forth in the first edition. Today's antitrust professionals may disagree on specific practices and rules, but most litigators, prosecutors, judges, and scholars agree that the primary goal of antitrust laws should be to promote economic welfare, and that economic theory should be used to determine how well business practices conform to that goal. In this thoroughly revised edition, Posner explains the economic approach to new generations of lawyers and students. He updates and amplifies his approach as it applies to the developments, both legal and economic, in the antitrust field since 1976. The "new economy," for example, has presented a host of difficult antitrust questions, and in an entirely new chapter, Posner explains how the economic approach can be applied to new industries such as software manufacturers, Internet service providers, and those that provide communications equipment and services. "The antitrust laws are here to stay," Posner writes, "and the practical question is how to administer them better-more rationally, more accurately, more expeditiously, more efficiently." This fully revised classic will continue to be the standard work in the field.