An Empirical Investigation of the Paramount Antitrust Case
派拉蒙反托拉斯案经验反思
（节选）
Richard Gil
US-Santa Cruz
1. Introduction
Since the Sherman Act was passed by US Congress in 1890, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have prosecuted those which practices represented a restraint of trade for other. Since the very beginning vertical integration became one of the usual suspects to determine how and when a restraint of trade was taking place. This has not changed over time and still today antitrust authorities investigate the purpose and consequences of any upstream firm looking to vertically integrate into a downstream industry. Unfortunately for them, there is not a clear rule of thumb that determines when vertical integration will be innocuous to competition in a particular industry. This circumstance makes the regulatory task of authorities more colicated and enhances the value of the study of the conse
qunces of previous antitrust resolutions. This paper provides evidence from the Paramount antitrust cast that was resolved during the decades of the 1940s and 1950s using a new data set and hopes this way to serve as refernce for future antitrust action.
自1890年美国国会通过谢尔曼反托拉斯法案后，美国司法部和联邦贸易委员会就开始对贸易管制行为进行起诉。垂直统一管理模式在最初受到很大质疑，通常被作为判断是否有垄断行为的标准。这点一直没有发生改变，反垄断调查今天仍然针对上游市场公司对下游市场公司进行垂直整合的动机和后果。不幸的是，垂直整合是否会危害一个特殊工业的自由竞争，现在还没有经验上的判定。这一情况使得权利调节工作变得错综复杂，同时，也让反托拉斯研究变得更有价值。这篇论文将利用最新数据，通过对发生在40及50年代的派拉蒙反托拉斯案进行研究，以期提出对未来反托拉斯行动有价值观点。
（中间略去数段，最不喜欢看前言了～～）
2. Industry Details and the Paramount Case
The movie industry is a typical example of a vertically organized industry. There exist three main agents in this industry: producers, distributors and exhibitors. As their names indicate, the producers are the agents in charge of movie production; the distributors are those that distribute movies into the exhibition market and the exhibitors are those agents that own theaters and provide movies to consum
ers directly. These can potentially be integrated into a same firm in different ways, production with distribution,  distribution with exhibition or production, distribution and exhibition in one same firm.  The first organizational form (production integrated with distribution) is common today in the US movie industry and other countries. The second organizational form is common in countries other than the US that feed their screens mostly with movies produced abroad. Finally the third type of organizational form mentioned above that integrated all three stages (production, distribution and exhibition) is the focus of attention of this paper.The most famous example of this organizational form is the case of the 5 major studios in the US previous to the Supreme Court ruling on the Paramount Case in 1948 that forced them to disintegrate.
特斯拉起诉特朗普政府
电影工业是垂直整合的典型案例。该工业主要由三部分构成：制作、发行、放映。正如名称透露出的信息一样，制作是整个行业的领头羊，发行方将电影发行到放映市场，而放映方则拥有自己的影院，并将电影直接提供给消费者。三个部分可以潜在的通过不同途径被整合到一个公司中，包括：制作兼发行、发行兼放映、制作发行放映三位一体。第一种情况在今天的美国以及很多国家的电影工业中都比较常见。第二种是除了美国，将主要放映放置在国外的公司经常采用的模式。最后一种整合了三个部分的情况就是本文要重点考察的类型。这种组织形式最著名的案例就是1948年，美国高级法院在派拉蒙诉讼案中，做出的强制美国五大制片厂分割的判决。
Previous to 1916 there was no full integration in the US movie industry. In 1916, the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation acquired Bosworth, Inc. and the Paramount Corporation. As the general opinion was that the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation did so to monopolize the industry and restrict interstate commerce, the Department of Justice called the first Paramount case. This antitrust case started in 1921 when the FTC filed a complaint against Famous Players-Lasky arguing that they were using theater acquisition to induce exhibitors to accept determinate vertical restraints such as block booking. The FTC concluded that block booking was indeed an anticompetitive practice and the case resulted in a cease order for block booking in 1927 as well as a demand for reform on Paramount theater acquisitions. The Paramount-Famous-Lasky Corporation disputed the charges and as result the FTC announced they would ask the government to pursue antitrust action.
1916年以前，美国电影工业中不存在完全整合的情况。1916年，名人名剧－拉斯基公司收购了博斯沃斯公司和派拉蒙公司。因为普遍认为，名人名剧－拉斯基公司的这种行为垄断了行业，并且限制了州际贸易，所以美国司法部提出了第一次派拉蒙案。反垄断案开始于1921年，FTC起草了一份针对名人名剧－拉斯基公司的起诉，认为该电影公司通过收购影院来减少放映商的数量，他们采用了诸如花这样的方式来达到垂直控制。联邦贸易委员会判决认定，花的确属于阻碍自由竞争的行为。1927年，该案最终作出禁止花的判定，并要求重组派拉蒙院线。名人名剧－拉斯基公司对结果表示质疑，联邦贸易委员会声明，它们必须要求政府在反垄断行动中表现积极。
On April of 1928, the Department of Justice filed an antitrust case against Paramount-Famous-Lasky Corporation and 9 others. After two rounds of appeals,
the Supreme Court found in 1930 the ten distributors guilty of violating antitrust law and identified block booking as the main problem. The sentence was never enforced due to the Great Depression. Even in 1933 the distributors looked for protection under the National Industry Recovery Act. The government nullified the decree and suspended the antitrust case. As a result, the distributors were allowed temporarily to use block booking and vertical integration while the studios recovered financially from the Great Depression. By 1935 the studios had recovered financially and were in good condition again. There was a general concern that the studios had recovered their dominant situation by developing further their market power through the anticompetitive use of block booking and blind bidding in detriment of smaller independent producers and exhibitors. In particular, smaller independent producers complained that big studios linked their best feature movies to B-movies (some still in production!). Independent producers and exhibitors claimed that they did this through block booking and the use of the threat that they could show the movies on their own theaters. 1928年4月，美国司法部提出了针对派拉蒙－名人－拉斯基等其它九家公司的诉讼。经过两轮上诉后，高级法院于1930年判定这十家发行商均违反了反垄断法，而关键问题就是花。由于大萧条时期的到来，判决一直没有强制
执行。甚至在1933年，发行商还寻求《国家产业复苏法案》的保护。政府宣布判决无效，而且对反垄断法提出质疑。结果，出于使制片厂能够在大萧条时期从金融危机中复苏的目的，允许发行商临时使用花和垂直营销模式。1935年，制片厂已经摆脱金融危机恶梦，进入良心发展。普遍认为，制片厂回复统治地位是建立在损害小型独立制片商和放映商利益的基础上的。小型独立制片商特别谴责的就是，大型制片厂在他们最优秀的长片之外捆绑B 级片的做法。独立制片商和发行商声称，大制片厂通过操纵花和影院达到垄断目的，因为他们可以在自己的影院放映自己的影片。
Besides this, the movie industry suffered of another worrying symptom: there was a popular feeling that the quality of the movies being produced by the major studios had declined severely during the 1930s due to the use of their market power. After the release of “Snow White” in 1938 by Dis ney and its tremendous success, Variety magazine identified this as a clear sign that quality was not going to come from the majors and blamed block booking as the cause of this. In
response to this and as a response to lobbying of different groups and organizations, the Department of Justice announced in 1938 a suit against the eight biggest studios in Hollywood, 25 of their affiliated companies and 132 executive officers for monopolization in restraint of trade. Curiously enough, 1939 is for many the greatest movie year in history with movies such as Go with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz or Wuthering Heights.
除此以外，电影业又有其它另人担忧的迹象出现：普遍感觉到大制片厂的影片质量在30年代出现大幅下滑，而且主要归罪于滥用市场权利。1938年，迪斯尼的[白雪公主]获得巨大成功，《综艺》指出，这说明优秀电影并非只能来自大片厂，同时批评了花行为。作为对各大团体和机构的回应，美国司法部于1938年提出了针对八大制片厂，以及它们的25大联营公司和132位执行官的诉讼，起诉他们通过垄断手法控制市场。值得注意的是，1939年是佳作辈出的一年，诸如[乱世佳人]、[绿野仙踪]、[呼啸山庄]都是在这一年制作发行的。
During 1939 the government refined its case and divided it into two different cases. The first case, even though not the focus of the paper here, was against several large independent theater chains. These exhibitors were accused of collusion jointly with the major studios and distributors to eliminate competition from smaller exhibitors.
1939年，政府重新评估案例并将其分割成两类。第一类不是本文讨论的重点，但它牵涉了一系列大型独立院线。这些院线被控与大型制片商和发行商勾结，来削弱小型院线的竞争。
As the first of the two cases caught momentum, the studios asked the government to reach an agreement behind doors. As a result of these negotiations, the government issued in 1940 a Consent decree for which the Paramount case was called off. In return, the government regulated (not eliminate
d) block booking and prevented blind bidding through trade shows. The Consent decree was silent about the studios’ theater ownership and th erefore the studios were allowed to keep their theaters. The reaction to this decree was not uniform across studios because the decree was negotiated by the five Majors leaving out Columbia, Universal and United Artists. None of these three had any