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Competition Law (competition + law)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	58%
Law and Criminology	25%

Selected Abstracts

THE PAST AND THE FUTURE OF COMPETITION LAW

ECONOMIC PAPERS: A JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECONOMICS AND POLICY, Issue 1 2004
Allan Fels
This paper reviews the evolution and significance of the Trade Practices Act for the development of competition policy in Australia. The paper also discusses the role of the ACCC in the enforcement of competition law and speculates on future challenges facing the ACCC in this role. [source]

Juridification, Codification and Sanction in UK Competition Law

THE MODERN LAW REVIEW, Issue 4 2000
Imelda Maher
First page of article [source]

Competition And Its Regulation: Key Issues

ANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 4 2002
P. Cook
This article examines the role of competition policy in developing countries. The leading international development agencies, such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, have proclaimed their support for private sector,led development as the best strategy for reducing poverty. The benefits of private sector development are dependent on ensuring competitive market conditions, which are often absent in developing countries. However, theoretical notions of competition and the ways in which it is perceived to work vary widely and have implications for the type of competition policy that is to be implemented. Competition laws are widespread in industrialized countries but are only just beginning to be introduced in developing countries. The article examines some of the implications of applying competition policy in developing countries when account is taken of different theoretical perspectives, and of the structural and institutional differences between industrialized and developing countries. [source]

THE PAST AND THE FUTURE OF COMPETITION LAW

,Consumer' versus ,Customer': The Devil in the Detail

JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, Issue 2 2010
Pinar Akman
According to the European Commission, the objective of EU competition rules is enhancing ,consumer welfare'. In EU competition law, however, ,consumer' means ,customer' and encompasses intermediate customers as well as final consumers. Under Article 102TFEU, harming intermediate ,customers' is generally presumed to harm ,consumers' and where intermediate customers are not competitors of the dominant undertaking, there is no requisite to assess the effects of conduct on users further downstream. Using advances in economics of vertical restraints and, in particular, non-linear pricing, this article shows that there are instances where the effect on ,customer welfare' does not coincide with the effect on ,consumer welfare' and the presumption can potentially lead to decisional errors. Thus, if the law is to serve the interests of ,consumers', the Commission should reconsider this presumption and its interpretation of the ,consumer' in ,consumer welfare'; otherwise, it remains questionable whose interests EU competition law serves. [source]

Competition Policy and Property Rights,

THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 544 2010
John Vickers
One of the most controversial questions in current competition policy is when, if ever, should competition law require a firm with market power to share its property, notably intellectual property, with its rivals? And if supply is required, on what terms? These questions are discussed with reference to recent law cases including the EC Microsoft judgment of 2007 and the US linkLine case of 2009. The analysis focuses on whether competition law and regulation are complements or substitutes and on incentives for investment and (sequential) innovation. [source]

PRIVATE ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT IN THE PRESENCE OF PRE-TRIAL BARGAINING,

THE JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS, Issue 3 2009
SYLVAIN BOURJADE
We study the effect of encouraging private actions for breaches of competition law. We develop a model of litigation and settlement with asymmetric information. We show that screening liable from non-liable defendants requires the Court to restrict the rules governing admissible evidence. We study how to design the rules so as to enhance the role of private litigation in antitrust enforcement and prove that increasing damages is better than reducing costs of initiating suits. We also find large benefits from introducing a system of compensation for defendants found non-liable, paid by unsuccessful plaintiffs. [source]

The European Commission's Guidance on Article 102TFEU: From Inferno to Paradiso?

THE MODERN LAW REVIEW, Issue 4 2010
Article first published online: 8 JUL 2010, nar Akman
The European Commission has for the first time issued a document expressing its official position on the enforcement of Article 102TFEU which prohibits the abuse of a dominant position on the Common Market. The Commission Guidance on enforcement priorities in applying Article 102TFEU to exclusionary abuses (adopted in December 2008) has ended a review of about four years. Given the increased enforcement of Article 102TFEU at the European level and the fact that many national provisions in the EU on unilateral conduct are modelled after Article 102TFEU, how the Commission intends to enforce Article 102TFEU is crucial for the application of competition law and the undertakings subject to it under European and/or national laws. The review period was preceded by severe criticisms of the Commission's approach to Article 102TFEU for protecting competitors instead of competition and for being insufficiently grounded in modern economic thinking. At the heart of the review and the discussions surrounding it lay the question of the objective of Article 102TFEU. Some, including the Directorate General for Competition claimed the objective to be ,consumer welfare', whereas some argued that ,consumer welfare' cannot be adopted as the objective at the expense of the protection of the competitive process. This article critically reviews the Commission Guidance, with an eye to assessing the ultimate objective of and the test of harm under Article 102TFEU. After discussing whether the Guidance indeed sets priorities, it examines the general approach of the Guidance to exclusionary conduct. It points out that despite there being some welcome novelties in the Guidance, there are also suggestions therein whose legitimacy and legality are questionable. Reflecting on the Guidance as a soft-law instrument, the article argues that although regarding the objective of Article 102TFEU, the Commission's apparent tendency towards ,consumer welfare' is not unlawful, the reform of Article 102TFEU to bring it more in line with modern economic and legal thinking seems to be far from complete. [source]

Telecommunications Reforms In Malaysia

ANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 4 2002
C. Lee
The article examines the range and scope of physical and structural changes that have taken place in the telecommunications sector in Malaysia in the past 15 years. It reviews the main policy reforms that have shaped the sector, including corporatization and privatization, and liberalization in fixed line and cellular services. The article documents the increase in competition, particularly in the cellular phone service market. Major regulatory reforms were introduced in the 1990s with the passage of the Communications and Multimedia Act and the establishment of the Malaysia Communications and Multimedia Commission. The key principles for regulating the sector are reviewed, including those directed towards economic regulation and consumer protection. With the absence of a formal competition law in Malaysia, the onus for addressing competition issues in the telecommunications sector rests with the sectoral regulator. [source]

Trade Reform and Manufacturing Pricing Behavior in Four Archetype Asia-Pacific Economies*

ASIAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 2 2005
Rod Tyers
F12; F14; N75 General equilibrium models are constructed of four Asia-Pacific economies that differ according to their levels of development, the comparative sizes of their manufacturing sectors and their patterns of comparative advantage and trade protection. The countries chosen are Australia, an industrialized importer of manufactures; Japan, an industrialized exporter; the Philippines, a developing importer; and the Republic of Korea, a developing exporter. Manufacturing industries are characterized as comprising identical oligopolistic firms producing homogeneous goods that are differentiated from competing imports. Oligopoly behavior notwithstanding, trade reforms are found to yield conventional results in that net economic gains are small while implicit transfers are substantial. More competitive (non-collusive) pricing by oligopolistic firms, which might be achieved through reform of competition law and trade practices surveillance, yields larger net gains and these gains tend to accrue to all domestic primary factors. Such reforms also yield substantial interaction between oligopoly behavior and economic and industrial structure. [source]

Reviewing the Trade Practices Act: The Dawson Committee Inquiry

THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 4 2002
Stephen P. King
The Dawson Committee is currently reviewing Australia's competition laws. This article introduces the Policy Forum and considers how the economics of the law can aid the review. [source]

Economic Regulation: a review of issues

ANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 4 2002
D. Parker
This article surveys a range of issues relating to economic regulation. It begins by examining market and state failures which provide the basis for arguments in support of regulation. Concentrating on natural monopolies, the article outlines the main forms of economic regulation, namely rate,of,return or cost,of,service regulation, price,cap regulation, and sliding scale regulation, a hybrid between price,cap and rate,of,return approaches. Reference is made to the broad phases that need to be considered in the evolution of natural monopoly regulation. These are concerned with regulating the incumbent monopoly, promoting and policing the development of competition, and maintaining competition once it has been introduced. The last phase may be better served through the use of effective national competition laws rather than dedicated sector regulation. The article also examines the range of factors that are likely to affect the economic efficiency and effectiveness of regulation. These involve a mixture of economic, political and governance conditions. [source]