Transnational Antitrust Law

Author(s):  
Hannah L. Buxbaum

In light of the significant diversity that remains among legal systems regarding the purpose and substance of market regulation, it is no surprise that efforts to develop a body of international antitrust law have failed. Instead, we rely on a diverse set of norms and transnational practices to regulate the increasingly globalized economy. This chapter discusses those practices, focusing on the actors and institutions involved. Section II addresses the production of substantive antitrust law at different levels (national, regional, and international) and discusses some of the ways in which these norms spread across legal systems. Section III turns to mechanisms for improving cooperation among legal systems in the enforcement of divergent regulatory norms, as well as to continuing sites of contestation among regimes. Section IV concludes with an analysis of the prospects for increased convergence in the field of antitrust law and policy.

2010 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 183-224
Author(s):  
Daniel Francis

Abstract The orthodox view of antitrust, or competition, law is that it should be interpreted and enforced purely to maximise economic efficiency. This chapter argues that it is by no means so clear that the maximization of efficiency should be the sole aim of competition law, either as a matter of common-law tradition or as a matter of ‘original’ legislative intent. Moreover, such a narrow approach neglects the important social and political components and consequences of antitrust policy and adjudication. This chapter further argues that antitrust law exhibits a striking resemblance, in many ways, to constitutional law, in particular to the extent that it constitutes a social and political response, administered by courts, to three particularly problematic applications of power—the ‘exclusion, invasion and abuse’ of the title. The first section of the chapter introduces these themes. In the second section, the exclusion-invasion-abuse model is described and the implications of each broad type of rule are explored. In the third section, the historical development of modern antitrust law is traced in order to show that the ‘pure efficiency’ standard lacks any credible historical claim to particular authority or authenticity. The fourth and final section, a brief survey of competing normative accounts of antitrust law offers in order to demonstrate the extent to which a myopic focus on efficiency can occlude the underlying policy consequences of antitrust law and policy-making.


2010 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 183-224
Author(s):  
Daniel Francis

AbstractThe orthodox view of antitrust, or competition, law is that it should be interpreted and enforced purely to maximise economic efficiency. This chapter argues that it is by no means so clear that the maximization of efficiency should be the sole aim of competition law, either as a matter of common-law tradition or as a matter of ‘original’ legislative intent. Moreover, such a narrow approach neglects the important social and political components and consequences of antitrust policy and adjudication. This chapter further argues that antitrust law exhibits a striking resemblance, in many ways, to constitutional law, in particular to the extent that it constitutes a social and political response, administered by courts, to three particularly problematic applications of power—the ‘exclusion, invasion and abuse’ of the title. The first section of the chapter introduces these themes. In the second section, the exclusion-invasion-abuse model is described and the implications of each broad type of rule are explored. In the third section, the historical development of modern antitrust law is traced in order to show that the ‘pure efficiency’ standard lacks any credible historical claim to particular authority or authenticity. The fourth and final section, a brief survey of competing normative accounts of antitrust law offers in order to demonstrate the extent to which a myopic focus on efficiency can occlude the underlying policy consequences of antitrust law and policy-making.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 194-207
Author(s):  
Klemen Podobnik

The author attempts to show that the seeming absorption of a large-scale, general geo-blocking prohibition in the field of competition law (antitrust) is unsystematic, and can negatively influence the further development of European competition law and policy and related goals. The positive implications of the GBR regime in the area of consumer protection law (and for trade regulation as such) are not negated. The author, however, attempts to underscore the fact that, in certain constellations, legislative instruments should be very clearly designated, their nature and scope concisely labelled. Formal oversights, such as omission of clear denominations or even plain wrong designations can – in certain circumstances – lead to functional consequences. For this reason the author stresses the view that the GBR is a legislative instrument of market regulation and consumer protection and has no real appreciable link to antitrust.


2010 ◽  
Vol 113-116 ◽  
pp. 980-984
Author(s):  
Li Mei Zou ◽  
Wen Bin Chen

The forestry carbon sequestration transaction (FCST) needs the guide of the law and policy. The subjects of FCST include buyers and sellers; the object is forestry carbon sequestration and the third party mainly includes brokers and measurement certification authorities. The effective elements of FCST legal behaviors need four main aspects. The establishment and regulation of legal systems includes transactional prices, three kinds of performing modes transaction, the benefit distribution of subjects, the mode of bearing legal reasonability and the trade dispute means.


2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 494-497
Author(s):  
Peter C. Carstensen

The relationship between law including competition policy and the goal of advancing innovation and entrepreneurship is complex. Bert Foer’s chapter identifies the many ways that competition law and policy directly and indirectly can affect positively or negatively the advancement of that goal. The comment seeks to highlight that range and complexity by using the categories from the traditional I-O Paradigm to show where and how antitrust law and policies it seeks to advance can be used to shape the conditions, structure, and conduct in markets to facilitate outcomes that will advance the public interest in innovation and entrepreneurship.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1-60
Author(s):  
Mark Glick ◽  
Catherine Ruetschlin

The Big Tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple, have individually and collectively engaged in an unprecedented number of acquisitions. When a dominant firm purchases a start-up that could be a future entrant and thereby increase competitive rivalry, it raises a potential competition issue. Unfortunately, the antitrust law of potential competition mergers is ill-equipped to address tech mergers. We contend that the Chicago School’s assumptions and policy prescriptions hobbled antitrust law and policy on potential competition mergers. We illustrate this problem with the example of Facebook. Facebook has engaged in 90 completed acquisitions in its short history (documented in the Appendix to this paper). Many antitrust commentators have focused on the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions as cases of mergers that have reduced potential competition. We show the impotence of the potential competition doctrine applied to these two acquisitions. We suggest that the remedy for Chicago School damage to the potential competition doctrine is a return to an empirically tractable structural approach to potential competition mergers.


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