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Prof. Gil Becker and Librarian Jeffrey H. Waller
Spring 2007
This guide is designed to tie in with the class assignment to examine an antitrust case or trade regulation rule in a specific industry. It highlights both library and web-based resources that can offer background information on the industries, legal documents, pertinent government regulations, and scholarly analysis. For further research assistance, please take advantage of the reference services available to you in the Geisel Library. Contact the Reference Desk in person or online at Ask a Librarian.
The reference librarians have created a group of Web pages named Research Help, and a tutorial called Searchpath, designed to help teach you the basics of library research and to introduce you to Geisel Library. On the Research Help pages, you will find a guide on Research Basics and a helpful guide about evaluating your Web sources, Judging What You Find. Please take advantage of these resources.
Before investigating the specifics of a particular case or regulation, it is important to understand the broader context, such as the industry's structure and the country's regulatory environment. The following resources provide such overview information.
Industry Profiles and Country Profiles [found in Business Source Premier]
This database includes industry reports from several well-respected sources, particularly Datamonitor's Industry Profiles and Global Insight's Industry Yearbooks. You can also read reports on each country's economic and political environment, including the OECD Economic Surveys and the Economist Intelligence Unit's Country Profiles. To access the industry reports, click Industry Profiles and then View By Industry to browse available reports by sector. To access country profiles, click Country Reports and browse by country.
Access restricted to Saint Anselm College community.
Standard and Poor's Industry Surveys [found in NetAdvantage]
These detailed profiles characterize the dynamics of a particular industry at the time they were written, including the major players, trends, financial statistics, and the regulatory framework. This online database contains the last eight years of the Industry Surveys; for earlier versions (for example, from the year when your antitrust case was litigated), see the archive on the library's Lower Level at call number HG4910 .S75.
Access restricted to Saint Anselm College community.
Books provide an excellent foundation for your research by providing in-depth exploration of both the theory and practice of antitrust law and trade regulation. To find books relevant to antitrust law and regulatory policy in general, try doing a Subject search in the Geisel Library catalog for any of the following. This will give you a list of potentially useful subject headings, along with the number of books that the library owns for each subject. Click on relevant headings to see a list of available books. For books specific to this country, add "–United States" to any of the headings below.
Antitrust law
Competition
Industrial policy
Trade regulation
For books more specific to your industry or case, you may wish to conduct keyword searching on appropriate terms, such as airlines or Microsoft. Note that you are unlikely to find books about antitrust cases that are extremely recent or relatively low-profile. You may also wish to search Worldcat (an online catalog encompassing the holdings of thousands of libraries worldwide), to identify relevant books owned by other colleges. Inside most of the individual book records is a link enabling you to request the book via Interlibrary Loan; all you need to do is input your name and contact information, and submit the request.
There are several useful books that have been placed on reserve for your convenience. You can request these at the Circulation desk and use them in the library:
The Antitrust Casebook: Milestones in Economic Regulation
Reserves KF1648 .A55 2001
Excerpts from court decisions in key antitrust cases in history, organized by the type of antitrust violation (monopoly, vertical price fixing, etc.).
The Antitrust Revolution
Reserves HD2795 .A64
Detailed studies of 20 recent antitrust cases, including Bell Atlantic, Intel, and AOL Time Warner.
Industry Studies (2 volumes)
Reserves HC106.8 .I53
Studies of competition and government intervention in 14 major industries.
Structure of American Industry (2 volumes)
Reserves HC106 .S78
Overview of 12 industries, including public policies pertaining to each.
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Be sure to examine the bibliographies at the end of each source, since these will point you to additional books and journal articles that may be of interest. Some of these will be in our collection, but if the "perfect" book/article is not here at Geisel, don't hesitate to request it from another library through our Interlibrary Loan service. Articles often arrive within 3-4 days, while books generally arrive within 1-2 weeks.
There are a number of business, economic, and law journals that provide scholarly analysis of antitrust and trade regulation issues. Some articles will focus more on theoretical aspects while others may examine the intricacies of specific cases. When you locate articles of interest, click on the WebBridge icon to determine whether the journal is available in the Geisel Library or in full-text via an electronic database. If the article isn't available, consider clicking on the Interlibrary Loan link to request a PDF copy of the article from another library.
Business Source Premier
This database provides the most comprehensive indexing of articles from business journals and the trade press, with many of them available in full-text. Try basic keyword searching using the Boolean operator "AND" to link together terms representing different concepts. For example, search antitrust AND telecommunications. Make use of the limiters across the top of the search results screen to narrow your focus to Academic Journals (to get scholarly treatments), Magazines (for popular magazine articles), or Trade Publications (for industry and company news).
Access restricted to Saint Anselm College community.
To find a higher percentage of relevant results, try doing Subject searching on relevant subject terms such as "Antitrust Law," "Trade Regulation," and "Competition." These can be combined with keywords for your specific industry or company. Be sure to read the bibliographies of articles to identify additional sources worth tracking down. Note that this database includes the full-text of the Antitrust Bulletin, Journal of Industrial Economics, Review of Industrial Organization, and other useful titles.
LexisNexis Academic Universe: Business
Offers full-text articles from business journals as well as industry and market news. The latter may provide information on how companies and industries respond to key antitrust cases or regulatory changes. Try searching the "Business News" and "Industry & Market News" sections.
Access restricted to Saint Anselm College community.
LexisNexis Academic Universe: Legal
Offers full-text articles from law journals and reviews, including the Journal of Law and Economics. Try searching the "Law Reviews" section.
Access restricted to Saint Anselm College community.
EconLit
Provides citations for journal articles, books, and working papers on economics. This is the most complete resource for searching academic journals in the field of economics.
Access restricted to Saint Anselm College community.
The following websites will be some of the most important resources for your research. They include government pages on trade regulation in the US and elsewhere, as well as resources for legal documents from antitrust court cases.
United States – Government Information
Code of Federal Regulations
This annual volume contains the full slate of federal regulations currently in effect for the United States, organized broadly by industry. Use the Browse feature to access the "title" (or section) corresponding to your sector (e.g., Energy, Food & Drugs), then do keyword searching within that title to locate specific regulations of interest. If you're not certain which title to browse, try keyword searching in the entire volume; add clarifying keywords if you get too many results.
Department of Justice, Antitrust Division
This agency enforces the antitrust laws by filing criminal suits or initiating civil action against businesses allegedly engaging in anti-competitive practices. Click on Public Documents to access appellate briefs filed by the Dept. of Justice, or go to Antitrust Case Filings for an alphabetical listing of cases, with links to the associated DOJ documents. You may also try using the Search Tools to locate documents relevant to your industry or trade rule.
Federal Trade Commission
This is the federal agency charged with preventing anticompetitive business practices and reviewing mergers for their potential adverse impacts on consumers. Their website includes several useful pages: click on Legal Resources for trade regulation rules and amicus briefs filed by the FTC, click Antitrust & Competition for the FTC's recent antitrust activities (including legal action), and Reports for analyses of competition within individual industries. Or, try keyword searching on your company or industry in the Search box.
Regulations.Gov
Use this public-oriented website to determine whether there are any new regulations or changes to existing ones that are currently under consideration for the industry you're researching. This is the best way to locate pending regulations before they are either rejected or incorporated into the Code of Federal Regulations.
United States – Legal Information
Antitrust Case Browser
This site offers summaries of US antitrust cases and their outcomes, organized helpfully both by legal area and by product. This is a convenient way to learn about antitrust cases in the industry you're examining, from the early 1900s through the present. This website also links to a FindLaw search tool that provides access to the full-text of Supreme Court decisions since 1893.
Cornell Supreme Court Collection
Cornell US Circuit Court Collection
Cornell has created these free searchable archives of Supreme Court and US Circuit Court cases. The Circuit Court archive generally stretches back only through the mid-1990s, while the Supreme Court archive has solid coverage back to 1990 and selected "historic" decisions for previous years.
Supreme Court
Use the search tool to locate Supreme Court documents (including opinions, orders, and memos) from cases involving your company as a litigant. The searchable archive consists primarily of cases from the past 5-10 years; for earlier cases, check the other web resources in this section.
Westlaw Campus Research (on-campus access ONLY)
This is the most powerful database for searching legal documents from federal and state courts, although it can be challenging to use effectively. Use the Find box at the upper left if you know the case citation or litigant names. Otherwise, try using the KeySearch tool, which helpfully organizes cases into topical folders. Click on the Antitrust and Trade Regulation topic, then either type keywords into the search box or drill down into the narrower subtopic folders. Finally, choose whether you want federal or state cases, add skeywords, and press the Search button. You will be able to read the full-text of relevant opinions, including handy cross-reference links to other cases cited by the judges.
Access restricted to Saint Anselm College community.
European Union
European Case Law
This search form enables you to find documents produced by the major courts in the EU, including the Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance. Opinions, orders, and summaries for specific cases can be found by searching either the names of parties or general keywords. Select "Competition" in the Field box to narrow the search to cases pertaining to anti-competitive practices.
European Commission: Competition Directorate-General
This commission is responsible for enforcing the competition rules in the EU. Click on Antitrust to read antitrust legislation or public documents from the last eight years of cases. Also check under the Mergers and Cartels headings for information such as merger guidelines, cartel cases, and case studies.
Other Countries
Australia
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
National Competition Council
The ACCC ensures that businesses comply with competition and fair trade law, while the NCC promotes the government's competition policy. The ACCC website includes merger guidelines, the Trade Practices Act, and publications on trade practices in different industries. The NCC website primarily offers reports describing the implementation of governmental competitive reforms in various sectors.
Canada
Competition Bureau
Competition Tribunal
The Bureau oversees enforcement of Canada's competition law while the Tribunal adjudicates on cases involving anti-competitive practices. The Bureau's website describes prohibited anti-competitive activity and contains the text of court orders and judgments on current and discontinued cases. On the Tribunal website, you can view all documents (including orders, affidavits, and responses) related to cases brought before the tribunal.
Japan
Fair Trade Commission
This website hosts a wealth of information in English, including trade legislation and guidelines, merger procedures, and study group reports on the efficacy of competition policies.
General Web Resources
APEC Competition Policy and Law Database
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) organization maintains this database of competition policies and laws in effect in its member nations. The database also includes basic info on each country's competition commission, including administrative procedures, selected decisions, and statistics. The depth of available information varies by country.
OECD Competition Page
The OECD's page on promoting competition includes links to committee reports, country surveys, and analyses of best practices in dealing with anti-competitive behavior. Click on the Statistics heading to access the International Regulation database, or click Information by Country to view the OECD's annual reports on competition law and policy in different countries.
Worldwide Antitrust Sites
This page maintained by the US Department of Justice links to the websites of competition agencies and authorities in many of the world's countries.
See the library's How To Cite Your Sources guide for resources on how to properly cite research materials. Always confirm the style required by your instructor.
The Library Liaison contact for this course is Jeffrey Waller.
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