Cooperation Comity And Competition Policy

"This work illustrates how domestic competition law policies intersect with the realities of international business. The first part of the book provides country reports explaining the extraterritorial reach of national laws; the countries covered are: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the EC, Israel, Japan, Singapore, and the United States. The second part of the book offers several proposals for effectively managing these overlapping competition policy regimes--by the publisher."

International agreements on competition law and policy are notoriously difficult to implement. This collection of essays examines the complexities involved when the issues of international co-ordination and harmonization of competition law and policy are considered.

The Future of International Competition Law Enforcement undertakes an original assessment of the EU's international cooperation agreements in the field of competition law and is uniquely focused on the bilateral sphere, often labelled as a mere 'interim-solution' awaiting a global agreement.

'This wonderful volume offers a timely and important look at competition policy where it is changing the most – developing countries pursuing regional agreements. It provides superb analytical discussions of the impact of regional competition policy integration, why developing states have pursued this strategy, and the extent to which it is meeting their needs. the editors have assembled a superb roster of experts, so it is not a surprise that the book recommendations are insightful, and deserving of attention from policy makers.' – Andrew Guzman, Berkeley Law School, US This book presents a detailed study of the interface between regional integration and competition policies of selected regional trade agreements (RTAs), and the potential of regional competition laws to help developing countries achieve their development goals. the book provides insights on the regional integration experiences in developing countries, their potential for development and the role of competition law and policy in the process. Moreover, the book emphasizes the development dimension both of regional competition policies and of competition law. This timely book delivers concrete proposals that will help to unleash the potential of regional integration and regional competition policies, and also help developing countries to fully enjoy the benefits deriving from a regional market. Bringing together analysis from well-known scholars in the developed world with practical insight from scholars in countries hoping to exploit the potential of competition law, this book will appeal to academics working in the field of competition law, practitioners, policy makers and officials from developing countries, as well as those in development organizations such as UNCTAD.

The study outlines the status quo of international cooperation in competition law matters. This is done by examining, in chronological order, the various approaches of the many multi- and bi-lateral international agreements that have attempted to solve the problems of competition law (WTO, GATT, etc.). Subsequently, the focus of this thesis is on the analysis of bilateral trade agreements. Within the framework of this analysis, the potential of trade agreements for competition law cooperation is to be shown. For this reason, only those bilateral trade agreements are analyzed that deal with the topic of regulatory cooperation in competition law in specially provided competition chapters. In doing so, the different stages of cooperation will be analyzed along the different integration phases of any trade agreements. The highest form of trade agreement integration – customs unions – will be dealt with separately, using the EU as an example.

Since the failure of the Havana Charter in 1947 till the success of the combined efforts of leading antitrust authorities against mighty Microsoft, the antitrust regime has witnessed several ups and downs. Auf jeden Fall the journey was not an easy one. Moreover now antitrust regime is standing at international crossroads and is wondering about its future direction. Today, at this crucial juncture the antitrust world is confronted with several dilemmas simultaneously. Choices are to be made between national welfare or global welfare, national autonomy or global regulations, the efficiency factor or the fairness view, national champions or global champions, collective efficiency or collective inefficiency, WTO or ICN, the US model or the EU model and so on. It is widely believed among experts that to overcome these dilemmas, the world needs some truly unified international antitrust framework, which would enable the international community to achieve optimal product mix incorporating the best from all options and through such optimal product mix the global community can enjoy to a large extent advantages that competition policy has to offer. In this direction I have examined the feasibility and viability of unifying international competition policy in this work. Additionally, as the title suggests I have listed out advantages and disadvantages of such moves. Efforts for harmonization of competition laws began as early as in 1948. Till date there are several binding and non-binding arrangements made in the direction of harmonization. The WTO and the EU for effective coordination in antitrust area have launched recently new initiatives. International Competition Network, a forum for active interaction among antitrust officials, even though non-binding in nature is doing considerably good work. I believe such confidence building initiatives among nations would help in arriving at some amicable solutions, agreeable to all nations. Chapter 8 focuses on various such initiatives taken in the direction of harmonization. In the concluding chapter, I elaborate further on need of having a unified antitrust regime under a contemporary scenario. Recommendations and views of experts are also presented. At the end I discuss my views about feasibility of having a truly unified antitrust regime in foreseeable future and other possible alternative measures that might help in achieving harmonization in future.

This thorough appraisal of competition law and policy from an international and comparative perspective covers the role of different international organisations active in the area, the significance of multinational enterprises and, in particular, the differences between US and EU systems. Taking examples from regions such as Africa, the Middle East and Asia, Maher M. Dabbah looks at the law and policy in developing countries and at a regional level, the internationalisation of competition law and the doctrines of extraterritoriality, bilateral cooperation and multilateral cooperation as well as the relationship between competition and trade policy. The book should prove useful to anyone who is interested in gaining an insight into the international dimension of competition law and policy. It is written in a language and style which make such a complex topic both possible to understand and enjoyable.