Competition Law in Developed Country

law

1. Introduction

In recent decades a vast proliferation of national competition laws can be observed. More and more states enacted a law that can be defined “as the set of rules and disciplines maintained by governments relating either to agreements between firms that restrict competition or to the abuse of a dominant position (including attempts to create a dominant position through mergers)” (Hoekman & Holmes 1999, 877). Rules commonly included in these competition laws are provisions on (i) horizontal restraints or cartels, (ii) vertical restraints, (iii) abuse of dominant position or monopolization, and (iv) mergers and acquisitions (see e.g. WTO 2003). In particular, until 1979 only around 24 countries had competition law, most of them developed countries. In the 1980s a further seven countries implemented competition law. Since then countries that controlled restrictive business practice by competition law increased considerably. From 1990 to 1999 around 58 countries took the step of enacting competition law. Since 2000 a further 13 countries enacted such a law. Especially, since the 1990s, a lot of developing and transition countries took the step of enactment. All in all, today around 102 countries have competition law (see Annex 1)

1.What is competition law?

Competition law, known in the United States as antitrust law, is law that promotes or maintains market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct.

2. Competition law, or antitrust law, has three main elements:

▪ prohibiting agreements or practices that restrict free trading and competition between business. This includes in particular the repression of free trade caused by cartels.

▪ banning abusive behavior by a firm dominating a market, or anti-competitive practices that tend to lead to such a dominant position. Practices controlled in this way may include predatory pricing, tying, price gouging, refusal to deal, and many others.

▪ supervising the mergers and...