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American Antitrust Institute's Invitational Symposium on "Buyer Power"
June 20, 2007, Washington D.C.

Consolidation and the growth of large buyers has led to a fundamental shift in the locus of power found in many supply chains with increasing influence accruing to downstream buyers and away from upstream sellers.  This shift has profound implications for competition policy and antitrust law.  Because prior policy and law has assumed suppliers held the balance of power, growing buyer power has the potential to fundamentally reshape thinking.  Rather than monopolization as a cornerstone concern, buyer power leads one to contemplate concerns surrounding monopsony.  Other changes are also likely with the field only beginning to address these formally. 

On June 20, AAI will host a multidisciplinary invitational symposium focusing on new thinking surrounding buyer power. How should buyer power be identified and characterized? Under what circumstances should its exercise be restrained by antitrust intervention? Does the antitrust community need to re-think its current reluctance to question what happens in vertical relationships? Presentations by eminent legal, economic, and marketing experts will be followed by a two-hour facilitated discussion with papers being published by the Antitrust Bulletin. The complete agenda is available at www.antitrustinstitute.org/Events.