In 1998, The U.S. Department of Justice and twenty state attorney generals sued Microsoft. They accused Microsoft of illegally protecting the monopoly it had on its operating system and attempting to prevent competition to its browser, Internet Explorer. Microsoft lost the case. What was eliminated as a result?

Question

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

The question presents a historical regulatory outcome from the Microsoft antitrust case and asks which concept was eliminated as a result.
Option 1: "competition". In the context of antitrust cases, the aim is typically to restore or promote competition, not eliminate it. Claiming that competition was eliminated would misstate the goal and outcome of such actions, since the remedy sought to reduce Microsoft’s anticompetitive advantages to allow more competitive pressure in the market.
Option 2: "kill zone". Although not a standard economic term in antitrust discourse, this option corresponds to the provided answer key. If we treat this as the intended correct choice for this particular item, the reasoning would be that the case targeted practices that hindered rivals and created a market zone where competition was effectively suppressed; thus, the “kill zone” concept denotes the area or conditions under which rivals could not enter or compete effectively, and the remedy aimed to eliminate or reduce that suppression.
Option 3: "absolute advantage". Absolute advantage is a classical concept describing when a firm can produce more efficiently than others; antitrust actions do not aim to eliminate the notion of absolute advantage per se, but to curb abusive practices that maintain market power, so this option misframes the legal objective and is not aligned with the typical outcomes of the case.
Option 4: "positional goods". Positional goods refer to items valued for their relative standing or status. This concept is not the central focus of the Microsoft antitrust remedy, which centers on market competition and access, not the social dynamics of positional goods. Therefore, labeling the case outcome as eliminating positional goods would be mismatched to the legal and economic aims involved.
In sum, since the provided data identifies "kill zone" as the correct option, the explanation should align with that choice, while noting that in standard antitrust framing, the aim is to enhance or restore competition rather than removing it; the other options describe concepts that either conflict with the typical objectives (competition, absolute advantage) or address different economic ideas (positional goods) that are not the fundamental target of the remedy in this scenario.

类似问题

Which of the following argument is true according to the De Beers case?

When two parties at different levels in the manufacturing and distribution process make an agreement that restrains trade, they have made a ________ blank restraint against trade.

___________ give government the power to block certain mergers, and in some cases, to break up large firms into smaller ones.

This decree was passed and forced major studios to divers themselves from owning movie theaters

What was the world's first widely adopted biodiversity policy?

The aim of the Paris Agreement is to ensure that the earth’s preindustrial temperature is not exceeded by more than º Celsius.

The IPCC's mission is to Blank ______.

Why have most international agreements for environmental protection been based on the honor system?

更多留学生实用工具

智能学习助手

风格化写作助手

论文查重助手

文献引用助手

课堂转译助手

课堂笔记助手

Quiz搜索助手

学校历年真题

智能刷题助手

智能匹配练习

希望你的学习变得更简单