by Lilia Qian

Abstract

Under current standards for scientific evidence defined under Daubert, antitrust models are frequently excluded from legal consideration, but not always for reasons that make them genuinely unreliable. This paper clarifies why antitrust models face difficulties when subjected to methodological scrutiny: the employment of model-based counterfactual arguments under an epistemically defective ‘but-for’ structure of causation. Assessing the relevance and reliability of an antitrust model is a matter of assessing the validity and applicability of the causal claim it makes, not the degree to which the modeling methodology is considered scientific. A more flexible causal framework, the weak-necessity structure of causation, is suggested as a means of developing and evaluating model-based counterfactuals. This framework allows for modeling of overdetermined-causation situations, or situations in which the outcome of interest can be attributed to two or more causes. Since antitrust cases typically involve overdetermined causation, the weak-necessity framework allows them to be modeled in a more precise and intuitive way.

Professor Kevin Hoover, Faculty Advisor

JEL Codes: B41, K21, L41, L44

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