Professors C. Scott Hemphill and Tim Wu Honored for Antitrust Scholarship

New York, June 24, 2014—Columbia Law School professors C. Scott Hemphill and Tim Wu have been honored for an article they published in The Yale Law Journal on a form of antitrust behavior in which firms act together to block competitors from entering the market.

The professors’ piece, “Parallel Exclusion,” was published in March 2013. Hemphill and Wu received the 12th annual Jerry S. Cohen Memorial Fund Writing Award from Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll on June 19.
 
In the article, Hemphill and Wu write that the practice of parallel exclusion has been neglected by scholars, despite its “potential to do more harm” than parallel pricing.
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Professors C. Scott Hemphill, left, and Tim Wu
 “After all, setting a high price leaves the field open for new entrants and may even attract them,” the professors write. “In contrast, parallel action that excludes new entrants both facilitates price elevation and can slow innovation. As a source of dynamic inefficiency, it has greater long-term significance for the economy.”
 
Hemphill, former antitrust bureau chief for the New York State Office of the Attorney General, teaches and writes about antitrust, intellectual property, and the regulation of industry.
 
Wu is the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and an expert on the Internet, media, and communications industries.
 
The Jerry S. Cohen Memorial Fund Writing Award was created to honor the late Jerry S. Cohen, a trial lawyer and antitrust writer. The prize is given each year for the best antitrust writing during the prior year “consistent with the principles of economic justice that animated Jerry S. Cohen’s professional life,” according to Cohen’s firm, which administers the award.