Antitrust practices Essay

Antitrust practices are practices carried on by businesses that extirpate up destroying pure(a) arguing in the market. Antitrust laws are laws prepared to seek and promote healthy market competition by preventing anti-competitive practices by companies. Some of the illegal practices that constitute to antimonopoly behavior include corporate mergers, monopolies and scathe fixing conspiracies (Bailey, 2010). The Clayton Act of 1914 was passed by the U.S Congress. It was an just law that was amended to stop and prevent practices that led to ill competition in the market. The Clayton Act was amended in order to complement an earlier version of the fair law referred to as the Sherman antitrust Act of 1980. This was a federal law that sought to prevent practices that were libellous to consumers such as cartels, monopolies and other unfair business practices (California Association of REALTORS, 2005).Google CompanyOne of the recent firms to be investigated for antitrust behavior is Google Company that leads the online hunt clubing industry. According to Weiss (2014), the firm recently was being investigated by disputation Commission of India (CCI) for claims that it abused its dominance in the online search engine industry by mainly promoting its bear services over those of its rivals. This reason is considered to create unhealthy competition in the business as the search engine company dominates its rivals in what is considered almost a monopolistic market. Antitrust behavior brings about both pecuniary and non-pecuniary costs. Since it damages healthy competition in the market, monopolies piece of tail result and this has adverse effects to the prices of commodities. The products end up becoming costly and expensive for the customers and, therefore, affecting the society negatively (Bailey, 2010). On the other hand, antitrust behavior leads to the output of products falling below the market competitive level and this is mainly witnessed in monopolistic markets. Then again, the antitrust practices can be costly for any company that has engaged in them since if investigations invoke that the company is guilty of the said acts then heavy penalties can be imposed on them. Furthermore, this can ruin the reputation of any company and, therefore, ending up losing its customers (Bailey, 2010).Monopolies andOligopoliesMonopolies and oligopolies are not always fair for the society. Their presence in any market simply means they know all the power to tick the prices of their products and services. This is not favorable to the customers since prices can always go up any time especially when the subscribe to for certain commodities is high. One good example of an oligopoly is the Coca Cola and Pepsi Companies. These are the worlds largest drinkable companies and demand for their products is never decreasing. However, these two companies represent a market with few suppliers while the consumers are many. They have all the power to dictate their products prices and the consumers have no power whatsoever (Hovenkamp, 2011). On the other hand, around government monopolies can be considered beneficial to the members of the society. Many governments in the current world control the toil and supply of electricity and other forms of energy. This is useful because the governments aim at providing such services to the citizens at affordable prices and across the countries. It is the responsibility of the government to enhance infrastructure development in the country and, therefore, running such sectors of the economy can be beneficial to consumers.ConclusionIn conclusion, it is important to point out that antitrust practices are unwanted behaviors since they destroy healthy competition among businesses. However, the law is strict on companies that engage in these practices and heavy penalties can be imposed on them. Antitrust practices include price fixing, corporate mergers and first appearance of monopolies (Reeves, 20 10).