NBER Working Papers · 2026 · [{"name": "Ricardo Perez-Truglia", "affiliation": []}, {"name": "Jeffrey Yusof", "affiliation": []}]
中文摘要
超级明星企业的崛起使主导性公司成为现代经济生活的核心，反垄断执法是监管其市场势力的主要政策工具之一。公众舆论能够塑造反垄断执法所处的政治和监管环境，但目前关于是什么驱动了这些偏好，直接证据却很少。我们对4,000个美国家庭进行了一项预注册的信息提供实验。受访者被告知五个真实反垄断案例中的一个，并被随机分配至旨在研究反垄断执法支持的四个潜在驱动因素的信息处理组：感知到的市场份额、感知到的消费者损害、感知到的不公平竞争，以及感知到的负面形象。四种处理均改变了各自旨在影响的信念，但它们对反垄断需求的影响却存在显著差异。关于消费者损害的信息产生了最系统性的影响：它提高了对原告的支持，以及对拆分和行为性救济措施的支持，且这种影响在一个月后依然可见，并进一步溢出为对反垄断政策更广泛的支持。相比之下，与专家预测相反，关于市场份额的信息对反垄断执法需求并无实质性影响。研究结果表明，公众在一个关键方面与经济学家的思维方式相似：他们并不关心市场份额本身，而是对消费者损害作出反应。一个核心经济学框架之外的因素——感知到的不公平竞争——同样重要，尽管其影响范围更为有限。我们讨论了这些发现对政策制定者和监管机构的启示。
Abstract
The rise of superstar firms has made dominant companies central to modern economic life, and antitrust enforcement is one of the main policy tools for regulating their market power. Public opinion can shape the political and regulatory environment in which antitrust enforcement takes place, yet there is little direct evidence on what drives these preferences. We conduct a pre-registered information-provision experiment with 4,000 American households. Respondents were told about one of five real antitrust cases and randomly assigned to information treatments designed to study four potential drivers of support for antitrust enforcement: perceived market share, perceived consumer harm, perceived unfair competition, and perceived negative image. All four treatments moved the beliefs they were designed to affect, but their effects on demand for antitrust differed sharply. Information about consumer harm had the most systematic effects: it increased plaintiff support and support for break-up and conduct remedies, with effects remaining visible one month later, and also spilled over to broader support for antitrust policies. By contrast, and contrary to expert forecasts, information about market share had no meaningful effect on demand for antitrust enforcement. The findings suggest that the public thinks like economists in one key respect: they do not care about market share per se, but respond instead to consumer harm. One factor outside the core economic framework, perceived unfair competition, also matters, though its effects are more limited in scope. We discuss implications for policymakers and regulators.