Should Australia Encourage Developing Countries to Adopt Competition Laws?

Requiring developing countries to adopt competition laws has become a standard element in Free Trade Agreements between those countries and developed countries, and in the check list of measures sought by the World Bank and other multilateral institutions. However, there is little reason to think competition policy will increase welfare in those countries, especially as its proper implementation requires institutional capabilities that most developing countries lack. Despite this, the ASEAN countries, along with many other developing countries, have adopted competition policies that mirror all the prohibitions typically found in developed countries. It is suggested that it would be preferable were those prohibitions dropped, and competition policy refocussed on to a narrower set of instruments and objectives.ASEAN, Australia, Competition Law, Antitrust Law

Supreme People\u27s Court Annual Report on Intellectual Property Cases (2015) (China)

The Supreme People’s Court of China began publishing its Annual Report on Intellectual Property Cases in 2008. The annual reports, published in April each year, summarize and review new intellectual property cases. This translation includes all 32 cases and 38 legal issues of the 2015 Annual Report. It addresses various areas of law related to intellectual property, including patent law, trademark law, copyright law, unfair competition law, antitrust law, new plant product patent law, and laws related to procedural and evidentiary issues in intellectual property cases. While China is not a common law country, these cases serve as guidelines for lower courts in adjudicating intellectual property disputes

Optimal Sequential Investigation Rules in Competition Law

Although both in US antitrust and European competition law there is a clear evolution to a much broader application of "rule of reason" (instead of per-se rules), there is also an increasing awareness of the problems of a case-by-case approach. The "error costs approach" (minimizing the sum of welfare costs of decision errors and administrative costs) allows not only to decide between these two extremes, but also to design optimally differentiated rules (with an optimal depth of investigation) as intermediate solutions between simple per-se rules and a fullscale rule of reason. In this paper we present a decision-theoretic model that can be used as an instrument for deriving optimal rules for a sequential investigation process in competition law. Such a sequential investigation can be interpreted as a step-by-step sorting process into ever smaller subclasses of cases that help to discriminate better between pro- and anticompetitive cases. We analyze both the problem of optimal stopping of the investigation and optimal sequencing of the assessment criteria in an investigation. To illustrate, we show how a more differentiated rule on resale price maintenance could be derived after the rejection of its per-se prohibition by the US Supreme Court in the "Leegin" case 2007.Law Enforcement, Decision-Making, Competition Law, Antitrust Law

How can European competition law address market distortions caused by state-owned enterprises? Bruegel Policy Contribution Issue No. 18 | December 2019

This Policy Contribution assesses whether European competition law could be applied more directly to state-owned enterprises that create an unlevel playing field in Europe because of the support they receive from their home governments. This issue has become a priority for many European Union countries and for the European Commission, given its impact on European economic autonomy. Competition law may not be the appropriate tool for addressing the granting of illegal subsidies or other forms of support in third countries, but it could be more effective than previously thought in dealing with the distortive effect of stateowned entities on the EU internal market. If State-Owned Enterprises are not resource-constrained or even profit maximising, they might be unconstrained by competitive pressures, therefore possessing a de-facto level of market power. By adapting existing antitrust theories of harm, such as predatory pricing, to fit the specific nature of SOEs, this Policy Contribution argues that it should be possible to add further tools to the EU’s toolbox. In any event, as part of its efforts to address the distortive effects on the internal market of foreign state ownership and subsidies, the European Commission should develop a coherent and proactive competition policy to provide guidance to the market

Competition authority in a trap? A few (bitter) words on making public policy by counteracting an unfair use of a contractual advantage in agri-food sector in Poland

A problem of counteracting bargaining powers of retailers, specially in agri-food sector, has been recently addressed by regulations in a few European countries but so far it has not been subject to academic considerations.A paper aims at finding rationales of granting administrative bodies with competences of interfering in contractual relationships between market players in reference to an abuse or misuse of bargaining power and to assess a possibility and probability of balancing public and private interests by administrative bodies applying regulations on counteracting an unfair use of a bargaining power. A point of reference for considerations is a Polish regulation dated from December 2016 - Act on Counteracting the Unfair Use of Contractual Advantage in the Trade in Agricultural and Food Products.In a lack of relevant case law a paper is based on a descriptive method of research as well as a method of conceptual analysis.A paper contests a correctness and rationality of selecting a competition authority as an enforcer of a discussed regulation. A competition authority seems to be caught in a trap of opposite (public and private) interests - an antitrust authority shall undertake an intervention in an interest of a private entity which in many situations may be seen as an intervention against public interest.A paper contributes to an ongoing discussion on EU's proposals for actions on eliminating imbalances between big retailing networks and food suppliers

The European Commission as a Constraint on its own Antitrust Policy

Although the legal and the political-scientific literatures on European competition policy (‘ECP’) are vast, there is no work that goes beyond the rationalization of stylized historical and/or legal facts. This approach may be justified on grounds of the political complexity of ECP and/or the heterogeneity of units of analysis. Nevertheless, the failure to come up with a positive device that identifies conditions under which specific policy decisions may or may not be possible has limited our assessments of the policy to value judgments rather than to true explanations. This paper attempts to remedy this situation by offering a logically complete and internally consistent model of ECP decision-making procedures. I show how the dependence of the European antitrust regulator (DG COMP) on a heterogeneous, multi-task and collegial organization (the Commission) severely constrains the feasible policy options of the former, and I argue that the nature and the goals of ECP are a function of (a) the ability of DG COMP to rely on national authorities, and (b) the distance between the ideal policy points of, on the one hand, the pivotal Directorate General in the Commission and, on the other hand, DG COMP and its internal opponents. Empirical work should follow

“Start-Up Aid” for Low Cost Carriers– A Policy Perspective

On 7 February 2005, the European Commission published draft “Community guidelines on the financing of airports and start-up aid to airlines departing from regional airports” for consultation. This article focuses on the Draft Guidelines’ statements on “start-up aid,” which seek to integrate the Commission’s statements in last year’s Charleroi decision into a consistent state aid policy framework. It is submitted here that such an attempt is highly problematic, given the absence of a coherent and objective justification for start-up aid in its proposed form. The Commission should not depart from its long-standing hostility to operating aid for reasons of perceived political expediency. At the very least, the Commission should limit the distortive effects of such aid to the greatest possible extent, in particular by limiting it to routes to and from truly regional airports

Sector Inquiries on the Italian Electricity and Natural Gas Markets Expose Failures in Both Liberalisation Processes.

On 9 February 2005, the Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM) and the Autorità per l’Energia Elettrica e il Gas (AEEG) concluded a joint sector inquiry on the progress of liberalisation in the Italian electricity market (Electricity Sector inquiry). The Electricity Sector inquiry follows another joint inquiry by the two authorities a few months earlier on the progress of liberalisation of the natural gas market in Italy (Natural Gas Sector inquiry). The Natural Gas Sector inquiry was published on 19 June 2004. This article summarises the findings and the conclusions of both sector inquiries and describes the methodology used by the two authorities. After several years since the beginning of both liberalisation processes in both sectors, the AGCM and the AEEG find that Italian electricity and natural gas markets still lack competitiveness and are characterised by the presence of a dominant operator, ENEL (in the electricity sector) and ENI (in the natural gas sector). The last part of the article summarises the reasons which brought the AGCM to open two antitrust investigations into alleged abuses of dominant positions against ENEL and ENI

Information exchanges between competitors: the Italian Competition Authority’s recent practice

In 2004, two cases on exchanges of information between competitors were decided by the Italian competition authority (“AGCM” – the Autorità Garante per la Concorrenza ed il Mercato). This revived a lively debate on the conditions in which these practices should be prohibited and whether they are anticompetitive per se. Over the years, the AGCM has taken a firm stand against such practices, in some cases beyond that taken by the European Commission and the European Court. This article reviews the rules and outlines the innovative approach that the AGCM has recently adopted