The actual story of the Sherman Act isn't empirically defensible - J.D. Rockefeller became much richer overnight mainly because of the splits and prices don't s

The actual story of the Sherman Act isn't empirically defensible - J.D. Rockefeller became much richer overnight mainly because of the splits and prices don't seem to have changed much. But J.D. Rockefeller was rather single minded, set on reducing cost to the end consumer for Yankee cultural reasons. Higher price may or may not be worse price. With airlines, you live with Robert Crandall's "no airline ever returned its cost in capital" so it's difficult to make any of that make sense :) Many economists warn "never reason from a price change."