This paper empirically investigates the effectiveness of competition policy by estimating its impact on Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth for 22 industries in 12 OECD countries over the period 1995-2005. We find a robust positive and significant effect of competition policy as measured by newly created indexes. We provide several arguments and results based on instrumental variables estimators and non-linearities to support the claim that the established link can be interpreted in a causal way. At a disaggregated level, the effect on TFP growth is particularly strong for specific aspects of competition policy related to its institutional set up and antitrust activities (rather than merger control). The effect is strengthened by good legal systems, suggesting complementarities between competition policy and the efficiency of law enforcement institutions.
The Philippines is an archipelago of approximately 7,107 islands. It has a long coastline extending to 235,973 square kilometers which is longer than that of the United States (UNESCAP 2002b). The country's archipelagic configuration requires an efficient maritime transport infrastructure composed of ports and shipping for growth and socioeconomic integration. The integration of peripheral islands to the urban economic nodes such as Metro Manila, Cebu, Davao and General Santos and the diffusion of investments and economic activities fundamentally count on an efficient road and maritime transport network. This paper examines competition policy and the regulatory framework of the port and shipping sectors. It assesses the policies and programs of the government in promoting competition in these sectors and recommends areas for policy and regulatory reform. After a brief description of the analytical underpinnings of competition policy and regulation the paper reviews the present state of competition and regulation in Philippine ports and inter-island shipping to identify emerging issues that call for policy action. It provides specific recommendations for policy and regulatory reform.
In Georgia, since the declaration of independence, there has always existed an attempt to establish legal and regulatory mechanisms that would improve competition. Numerous laws and legal acts were formed with the purpose to analyze the process of holding dominant positions by economic agents at markets, to eliminate the abuse of such positions, to reveal the attempts of limited competition at market, as well as to provide established market with fair competition rules. Georgia has always aspired to integrate with European Union structures. The country is a member of World Trade Organization and a part of multiple bilateral, regional, multilateral agreements and international organizations (that collaborate within international competition field) as a full member or as an observer. Based on the above mentioned issues, the improvement of competition policy becomes inevitable in Georgia.
While competition is good for consumers and economies, competition rules alone cannot necessarily produce adequate outcomes for all circumstances. Other norms, particularly regulatory norms, are also often likely to be relevant. The current legal and policy debates about 'disruptive innovation' highlight the need for a healthy mixture of competition and regulation. This paper offers a series of reflections arising from the challenges posed by disruptive products, services and business models. These reflections cover matters such as the capacity of legal procedures to keep pace with rapidly changing market environments. Competition advocacy can help regulators decide controversial points. The paper discusses several sectors, such as the car-riding and overnight sleeping sectors, in which different interests must simultaneously be accommodated within the boundaries of national tradition and European Union law. As discussed, some of these matters have now been adjudicated by the EU Courts. The related subjects of the acquisition of data as well as the requirements of privacy and data protection principles are also considered. The paper reflects on the role of network effects and on the difficult choices to be made with regard to the wisdom of relying on competition law or on the nature of innovation itself to deliver appropriate responses to the growth of network-based economic power; and the paper notes but does not suggest a remedy for the problem of delay as inimical to effective judicial review.
Following the global trend in using private sector participation in infrastructure financing and development, the Philippines has largely utilized privatization as a major approach to the development of infrastructure, particularly in power, water, transport, and telecommunications sectors. To provide a legal framework for private sector participation in infrastructure projects, Congress passed the build-operate-transfer (BOT)law, as amended, to expand the scope of private sector involvement in infrastructure provision. Regulatory reform has accompanied the effort to ensure operational efficiency and competitive provision. This paper intends to review and evaluate the regulatory framework that has been established or suggested for the Philippines, focusing on the power and telecommunications sectors. This study will primarily evaluate the existing regulatory framework. It aims to identify issues and gaps, paying particular attention on the competition-related provisions as well as the institutional capacities of regulatory institutions.
Once upon a time . . . and a very good time it was, advocates for marketbased approaches to health policy had a coherent story to tell. Cost and quality would remain suboptimal as long as fee-for-service medicine persisted and the myriad market imperfections that impede efficiency went unchecked. However, things could be righted by adopting principles associated with managed care, together with pursuing sensible antitrust enforcement and government deregulation to clear away the private and regulatory underbrush obstructing market forces. Economic theorists and policy experts agreed that these steps would effectively address information, agency, and moral hazard problems and begin to glue together the pieces of our fragmented delivery system. And, for a while, things seemed to work out as promised. Providers began to reorganize into firms and other integrating arrangements and health insurers adopted financial and contractual measures designed to align provider incentives with consumer needs. Regulators directed policies at removing obstacles to competition and antitrust enforcers sought to encourage efficient consolidation while blocking cartels and provider oligopolies. Spiraling costs leveled off for a while and both payment systems and provider organizations began to adapt to market forces.
The paper develops a methodology for the evaluation of competition policy. Based on the existing literature and experiences with policy evaluations in other areas of economic activity, the three-step / nine-building-blocks methodology provides guidance for evaluation projects and also assists in the identification of avenues for further academic research.
This paper presents a model which focuses on differences between the competition policy of the EU and antitrust of the U.S. It introduces three versions - Neutral, American, and European. Two-stage game model takes the authority's perspective and describes options and behavior of antitrust officials when a firm engages in non-price vertical agreement (possibly restraint). Optimal behavior is expressed as expected income of the authority (EIA) which is a function of probability of wrong decision(s) in the course of action. It takes into account specific preferences, different types of errors, fear of those errors, and harm they might cause. Comparison shows some unnoticed features and results slightly in favor of the EU.
1. Competition policy and trade policy are usually distinct areas of economic policy, the first being inward, the second outward oriented. With increasing economic internationalization their interconnections become more important, not only on the national, but also on the European and world levels. 2. In the EC the completion of the Single Market at the beginning of 1993 permits gains from increased intra-European trade due to specialization, economies of scale and scope, reduced transaction costs. The ensuing restructuring pressures as well as growing imports from third countries lead to inter-firm cooperations, mergers and concentration. National subsidies often increase distortions. 3. EC competition policy therefore is increasingly Controlling deviations from fair competition in the private and in the public sector. It is thus replacing national trade policies by member states, which are no longer available. This is a definite improvement, as imperfections within the EC can thus be addressed directly instead of by second best trade policy measures. 4. Intra-EC imperfections in factor and product markets such as wage rigidities and labour immobility, monopolistic and oligopolistic market structures, positive and negative external effects, public goods, etc. are affecting not only intra-European trade but also trade with third countries. In order to redress the distortions caused by such imperfections, trade policy measures such as import restrictions and export subsidies are used by the EC. These measures often have anti-com-petitive effects which could be avoided by addressing the distortions directly. 5. Non-competitive market structures, government intervention and other imper-fections in third countries give rise to aggressive export and protectionist import policies, which cannot directly be addressed by EC policies. Counteractions by EC trade policy instruments are mostly GATT-legal (safeguards, antidumping and antisubsidy measures), but partly not covered by GATT rules (VERs, OMAs). Both have usually anticompetitive effects: e.g. undertakings are com-parable with international cartels; anticircumvention measures against "screwdriver'-firms have a tendency to limit international capital mobility. 6. Conflicts between EC and third countiy trade policies - which are based on and justified by imperfections in Europe and Overseas - can be solved or at least diminished by attacking these imperfections directly where they arise. This is done within the EC by competition policy; it is planned for the union with EFTA in the EEA; and there are efforts to extend Cooperation between competition policy makers to the world level, following valuable OECD recommendations. It is an open question whether GATT can be strengthened or whether an Institution similar to ITO as envisaged by the Havana Charter will be established. The necessity to coordinate trade policies under worldwide competition rules is undeniable, if huge efficiency losses - possibly trade wars - are to be avoided.
This article employs cultural political economy to explore, interpret, and explain the articulation of competition, competitiveness, and competition policies in Asia in the current neo-liberal era. It describes how this approach explores social order and change in terms of the interaction between semiosis and structuration in the context of four types of selectivity: structural, agential, discursive, and technological. It then outlines an analytical framework and methodology to apply this approach to the chosen case study. This concerns how these modes of selectivity have operated since the 1997 'Asian Crisis' to produce changes in the policy discourses and practices of the World Bank and its Asian regional agencies with the declared aim of reducing poverty, enhancing competitiveness, and promoting corresponding forms of competition policy. Next it examines how these discourses and practices are assembling a new dispositive around an emerging disciplinary and governmentalized socioeconomic-cum-legal order in the wake of the Doha conjuncture in Asia. The concluding remarks address some tensions and challenges in the making of this competitiveness order in Asia.
The current economic development in europe is a continuous cause for concern. First and foremoust in terms of the dept crisis, having a closer view regarding disbalances of competitiveness. Investigations concerning regional competitiveness agree on the importance of knowledge. Only "knowledge-economies" seem to be able to create sustainable prosperity. However, the question is crucial, which kind of knowledge is decisive. The knowledge which ensures material prosperity has to be discovered by competition. At the same time, firms are confronted with the continuously increasing dynamics of the global economy. Starting from the Hayekian concept of knowledge-based competition this article examines, why education policy should be seen as a reasonable complement of competition policy and defines the relevant academic voids.
This paper examines the role of competition law and policy as tools for poverty reduction and development. The authors put forward five related principles, building upon the important work on related issues that has been done by the OECD, the International Competition Network (ICN), UNCTAD and civil society organizations such as CUTS in recent years, in addition to the earlier work done on these topics in the WTO Working Group on the Interaction between Trade and Competition Policy when that body was active from 1997 through 2003. Together, these principles comprise the holistic approach to competition law and policy which is referenced in the title of the paper: * First, the focus of policy makers in using competition policy as tool for poverty reduction should be on approaches that are relatively easy to implement but have a trackrecord of being effective and economically sound. * Second, for competition policy reforms and legislation to be successful, public acceptance and support is critical and must be an essential focus of related initiatives. * Third, to serve as an effective tool of poverty reduction, competition policy needs to address the needs of the citizens of poorer societies in their capacities as producers (and, therefore, as users of extensive input goods and services, including public infrastructure), in addition to their capacities as final consumers/households. * Fourth, it is posited that competition policy is more than just what competition agencies do and includes the full spectrum of measures that governments employ to enhance competition and improve the performance of markets. * Fifth, in order to address the challenges posed by the changing landscape of competition policy worldwide, new forms of international co-operation may need to be considered. The paper then develops the application of these principles with respect to five specific areas in which competition policy can contribute to poverty reduction, namely: (i) the reform of public and business infrastructure sectors, particularly in the context of developing and transition economies; (ii) the complementary roles of competition law enforcement and market liberalization in public procurement markets; (iii) various related dimensions of competition policy as they relate to public health objectives; (iv) the addressing of possible monopsonistic practices in international supply chains that may affect the ability of developing country producers to reap gains from participation in international markets; and (v) measures to address the enduring problem of international cartels which, despite an impressive record of prosecutions by developed jurisdiction competition agencies over the past decade, continue to impose substantial costs on developing economies. The paper concludes with some observations regarding the future of international cooperation in the competition policy sphere.
The study analyzes the impact of European antitrust enforcement on industry performance measured as competition intensity (Price Cost Margin) and productivity (labor productivity and distance to the frontier). For a panel of OECD countries on the industry level since 1988, we estimate the impact of an infringement decision by the European Commission on the competitive market structure. We find that enforcement has a considerable effect, both on competition intensity and on productivity. However, the impact differs with the anticompetitive economic conduct. Cartels behave as theoretically predicted with an increase in competition and productivity after the cartel break-up. The impact of vertical conduct is more complex, with positive and negative efficiency effects of antitrust enforcement depending on the exclusivity of the vertical restraint.
The article is devoted to the analysis forming and development of the competition policy of Germany in the period of economic crises, to determination of national tendencies in this sphere, and also estimations of efficiency measures of government control for renewal of economy.
This Article examines whether the Catholic Church's social teaching has something to tell antitrust scholars and masters of competition policy. Although papal encyclical letters and other documents are not meant to provide an analytical framework giving clear answers to complex competition questions, this does not mean that these thoughts cannot benefit businessmen, scholars, and policy makers. The Vatican teaching helps us remember that business and morality do not belong to two different worlds, and that markets should serve the whole Man. It acknowledges the positive role of free markets,that is, the exercise of economic freedom as being an important part of human dignity, yet warns that competition can be preserved only if it is curbed both by moral and statutory rules. It is certainly not easy to find a balance between the commandments to "love your neighbor" and "not collect treasure on earth." I argue that either antitrust law or other forms of self- or government regulation should prohibit market conduct that undermines business virtues.
