Abstract

The present paper focuses on the several features of the relationship between economic models and antitrust law, given the significant use of models in such legal context and, in particular, the role they play in the interpretation of antitrust law materials. The Microsoft case is discussed as a significant example. Then, to assess the use of those models, the paper takes into consideration the hypothesis that they are a kind of fiction, and claims in fact that the expression «economic models» refers to a variety of intellectual constructions some of which (but not all) are fictions. Therefore the paper contends that, to assess the legal use of an economic model, and in antitrust law in particular, it is important to understand what kind of model it is: namely, whether it is a fiction, or a presumption, or a simplification, or an idealization, or else.