Cite as: 509 U. S. 209 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
Brown & Williamson had a reasonable prospect of producing sustained supracompetitive pricing in the generic segment adequate to recoup its predatory losses: first, if generic output or price information indicates that oligopolistic price coordination in fact produced supracompetitive prices in the generic segment; or second, if evidence about the market and Brown & Williamson's conduct indicate that the alleged scheme was likely to have brought about tacit coordination and oligopoly pricing in the generic segment, even if it did not actually do so.
1
In this case, the price and output data do not support a reasonable inference that Brown & Williamson and the other cigarette companies elevated prices above a competitive level for generic cigarettes. Supracompetitive pricing entails a restriction in output. See National Collegiate Athletic Assn. v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla., 468 U. S. 85, 104-108 (1984); Broadcast Music, Inc. v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., 441 U. S. 1, 19-20 (1979); P. Samuelson & W. Nordhaus, Economics 516 (12th ed. 1985); Sullivan, Antitrust, at 32; Bork, The Antitrust Paradox, at 178-179; 2 Areeda & Turner ¶ 403a; Easterbrook, The Limits of Antitrust, 63 Texas L. Rev. 1, 20, 31 (1984). In the present setting, in which output expanded at a rapid rate following Brown & Williamson's alleged predation, output in the generic segment can only have been restricted in the sense that it expanded at a slower rate than it would have absent Brown & Williamson's intervention. Such a counterfactual proposition is difficult to prove in the best of circumstances; here, the record evidence does not permit a reasonable inference that output would have been greater without Brown & Williamson's entry into the generic segment.
Following Brown & Williamson's entry, the rate at which generic cigarettes were capturing market share did not slow; indeed, the average rate of growth doubled. During the
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