Economics and the Interpretation and Application of U.S. and E.U. Antitrust Law: Economics-based legal analyses of mergers, vertical practices, and joint ventures PDF Download

Author: Richard S. Markovits
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Antitrust law
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Richard S. Markovits
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642243134
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 705

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Book Description
Volume 2 uses the economic and legal concepts/theories of Volume 1 to (1) analyze the U.S. and E.U. antitrust legality of mergers, joint ventures, and the pricing-technique and contractual/sales-policy distributor-control surrogates for vertical integration and (2) assess related positions of scholars and U.S. and E.U. antitrust officials. Its analysis of horizontal mergers (1) delineates non-market-oriented protocols for determining whether they manifest specific anticompetitive intent, would lessen competition, or are rendered lawful by the efficiencies they would generate, (2) criticizes the U.S. courts’ traditional market-share/market-concentration protocol, the HHI-oriented protocols of the 1992 U.S. DOJ/FTC Guidelines and the European Commission (EC) Guidelines, and the various non-market-oriented protocols the DOJ/FTC have increasingly been using, (3) argues that, although the 2010 U.S. Guidelines and DOJ/FTC officials discuss market definition as if it matters, those Guidelines actually reject market-oriented approaches, and (4) reviews the relevant U.S. and E.U. case-law. Its analysis of conglomerate mergers (1) shows that they can perform the same legitimate and competition-increasing functions as horizontal mergers and can yield illegitimate profits and lessen competition by increasing contrived oligopolistic pricing and retaliation barriers to investment, (2) analyzes the determinants of all these effects, and (3) assesses limit-price theory, the toe-hold-merger doctrine, and U.S. and E.U. case-law. Its analysis of vertical conduct (1) examines the legitimate functions of each type of such conduct, (2) delineates the conditions under which each manifests specific anticompetitive intent and/or lessens competition, and (3) assesses related U.S. and E.U. case-law and DOJ/FTC and EC positions. Its analysis of joint ventures (1) explains that they violate U.S. law only when they manifest specific anticompetitive intent while they violate E.U. law either for this reason or because they lessen competition, (2) discusses the meaning of an “ancillary restraint” and demonstrates that whether a joint-venture agreement would be illegal if it imposed no restraints and whether any restraints imposed are ancillary can be determined only through case-by-case analysis, (3) explains why scholars and officials overestimate the economic efficiency of R&D joint ventures, and (4) discusses related U.S. and E.U. case-law and DOJ/FTC and EC positions. The study’s Conclusion (1) reviews how its analyses justify its innovative conceptual systems and (2) compares U.S. and E.U. antitrust law as written and as applied.

Author: Richard S. Markovits
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030964825
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
This book is Volume II of a two-volume set on antitrust policy, analyzing the economic efficiency and moral desirability of various kinds of antitrust-policy-coverable conduct and various possible government responses to such conduct, including US and EU antitrust law. The overall study consists of three parts. Part I (Chapters 1-8) introduces readers to the economic, moral, and legal concepts that play important roles in antitrust-policy analysis. Part II (Chapters 9-16) analyzes the impacts of eight types of conduct covered by antitrust policy and various possible government responses to such conduct in terms of their economic efficiency, their impact on liberal moral rights, and their instantiation of various utilitarian and other egalitarian conceptions of the moral good. Part III (Chapters 17-18) provides detailed information on US antitrust law and EU competition law and compares the extent to which—when correctly interpreted and applied—these two bodies of law could increase economic efficiency, protect liberal moral rights, and instantiate various morally defensible conceptions of the moral good. This second volume contains the last 6 chapters of Part II, which focus respectively on horizontal (M&A)s, conglomerate (M&A)s, surrogates for vertical integration, vertical (M&A)s, joint ventures, and internal growth and Part III, which focuses on US antitrust law and EU competition law. The book will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students of economics and law who are interested in welfare economics, antitrust policy, and The General Theory of Second Best.

Author: Richard S. Markovits
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9783642243080
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 761

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Book Description
This volume (1) defines the specific-anticompetitive-intent, lessening-competition, distorting-competition, and exploitative-abuse tests of illegality promulgated by U.S. and/or E.U. antitrust law, (2) compares the efficiency defenses promulgated by U.S. and E.U. antitrust law, (3) compares the conduct-coverage of the various U.S. and E.U. antitrust laws, (4) defines price competition and quality-or-variety-increasing-investment (QV-investment) competition and explains why they should be analyzed separately, (5) defines the components of individualized-pricing and across-the-board-pricing sellers’ price minus marginal cost gaps and analyses each’s determinants, (6) defines the determinants of the intensity of QV-investment competition and explains how they determine that intensity, (7) demonstrates that definitions of both classical and antitrust markets are inevitably arbitrary, not just at their periphery but comprehensively, (8) criticizes the various protocols for market definition recommended/used by scholars, the U.S. antitrust agencies, the European Commission, and U.S. and E.U. courts, (9) explains that a firm’s economic (market) power or dominance depends on its power over both price and QV investment and demonstrates that, even if markets could be defined non-arbitrarily, a firm’s economic power could not be predicted from its market share, (10) articulates a definition of “oligopolistic conduct” that some economists have implicitly used–conduct whose perpetrator-perceived ex ante profitability depended critically on the perpetrator’s belief that its rivals’ responses would be affected by their belief that it could react to their responses, distinguishes two types of such conduct–contrived and natural–by whether it entails anticompetitive threats and/or offers, explains why this distinction is critical under U.S. but not E.U. antitrust law, analyzes the profitability of each kind of oligopolistic conduct, examines these analyses’ implications for each’s antitrust legality, and criticizes related U.S. and E.U. case-law and doctrine and scholarly positions (e.g., on the evidence that establishes the illegal oligopolistic character of pricing), and (11) executes parallel analyses of predatory conduct--e.g., criticizes various arguments for the inevitable unprofitability of predatory pricing, the various tests that economists/U.S. courts advocate using/use to determine whether pricing is predatory, and two analyses by economists of the conditions under which QV investment and systems rivalry are predatory and examines the conditions under which production-process research, plant-modernization, and long-term full-requirements contracts are predatory.

Author: Richard S. Markovits
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9783662435557
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Vol. I (1) operationalizes the specific-anticompetitive-intent and lessening-competition tests of illegality both U.S. and E.U. antitrust law promulgate and the distorting-competition and exploitative-abuse-of-a-dominant-position tests E.U. law promulgates, (2) distinguishes these tests from an economic-inefficiency test of illegality, (3) lists the antitrust licit and illicit categories of profits conduct can yield, (4) develops conceptual systems and theories for analyzing conduct’s impact on price and quality-or-variety-increasing-investment competition, (5) demonstrates that definitions of both economic and antitrust markets are inevitably comprehensively arbitrary, (6) criticizes various market-definition protocols proposed by scholars or used by government officials, (7) explains why no market-oriented approach to measuring a firm’s economic power or conduct’s antitrust illegality can be acceptable, (8) analyzes the profitability of oligopolistic and predatory conduct of all kinds and criticizes various scholarly arguments about their profitability, (9) proposes protocols for determining whether illegal-oligopolistic or predatory conduct has taken place and criticizes various scholarly and official protocols for doing so, and (10) examines the U.S. and E.U. case-law on such conduct and the European Commission’s positions on predatory conduct. Vol. II uses non-market-oriented approaches to analyze (1) the determinants of whether horizontal mergers, conglomerate mergers, vertical mergers, vertical internal growth, the various surrogates for vertical integration, joint ventures, and other sorts of collaborative arrangements violate the specific-anticompetitive-intent or lessening-competition test of illegality--i.e., violate U.S. and E.U. antitrust law, correctly interpreted and applied, (2) the determinants of the competitive impact of a rule allowing all members of a set of product rivals to engage in any type of vertical conduct and the legal relevance of such a rule’s competitive impact, (3) the U.S. and E.U. case-law on all the above categories of conduct, and (4) the positions that the U.S. DOJ, FTC, and European Commission have taken on the appropriate way to analyze the legality of each such category of conduct and on the circumstances in which exemplars of each such category of conduct will be illegal. Vol. II concludes by comparing U.S. and E.U. antitrust law both as written and as actually interpreted and applied.

Author: Richard S. Markovits
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783030964832
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book is Volume II of a two-volume set on antitrust policy, analyzing the economic efficiency and moral desirability of various kinds of antitrust-policy-coverable conduct and various possible government responses to such conduct, including US and EU antitrust law. The overall study consists of three parts. Part I (Chapters 1-8) introduces readers to the economic, moral, and legal concepts that play important roles in antitrust-policy analysis. Part II (Chapters 9-16) analyzes the impacts of eight types of conduct covered by antitrust policy and various possible government responses to such conduct in terms of their economic efficiency, their impact on liberal moral rights, and their instantiation of various utilitarian and other egalitarian conceptions of the moral good. Part III (Chapters 17-18) provides detailed information on US antitrust law and EU competition law and compares the extent to which-when correctly interpreted and applied-these two bodies of law could increase economic efficiency, protect liberal moral rights, and instantiate various morally defensible conceptions of the moral good. This second volume contains the last 6 chapters of Part II, which focus respectively on horizontal (M&A)s, conglomerate (M&A)s, surrogates for vertical integration, vertical (M&A)s, joint ventures, and internal growth and Part III, which focuses on US antitrust law and EU competition law. The book will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students of economics and law who are interested in welfare economics, antitrust policy, and The General Theory of Second Best.

Author: Marcus Glader
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1847201687
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
The book is warmly recommended to practitioners and academics from both the legal and the economic field. Guido Westkamp, Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice . . . Glader offers strong commentary and case explanation, coupled with insightful analysis, in this complex area. . . This book is strong on both the relevant law, and the economics arena in which the law must be applied, and deals equally well with the US and EC principles and practice. Mark Furse, European Competition Law Review The pace and scope of technological change is increasing, but some innovative technologies take years before they give rise to saleable products. Before they do, there is competition in ideas and research, but the ideas cannot be market tested, because there are no products or services to offer to consumers. Competition law, in Europe and the USA, cannot be applied to competition in research for innovation as if it was competition between products. Completely different problems arise and a completely different approach is needed. This book, the first on innovation markets, shows how this new approach has been used by competition authorities on both sides of the Atlantic in a wide variety of cases. It analyses in depth and detail the comparative law and economics of the problems arising from the different stages of these markets . It considers how far conclusions can be drawn about the future and comes to interesting, practical and sensible conclusions. And it avoids both unjustified scepticism and exaggerated enthusiasm about the theories of innovation markets. John Temple Lang, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, Brussels and London; Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and Oxford University, UK This book examines the legal standards and their underlying economic rationale for the protection of competition in the innovation process, in both European competition law and American antitrust law. Apart from relevant regulatory frameworks, the author also reviews a range of case laws, which assess whether a transaction or unilateral conduct would limit market participants incentives and abilities for continued innovation and future competition. At the centre of this study is the innovation market concept. This concept entails the delineation, for purposes of antitrust analysis, of an upstream market for competing R&D. Questions of market definition, the assessment of innovation competition in defined markets, the role of efficiencies in the appraisal of transactions and possible remedies to alleviate anti-competitive effects are also explored. Updating the field of research in light of new developments and broadening and deepening the categorization and analysis of the innovation market area, this book will be of great interest to academics, practitioners and consultants, and also public policymakers.

Author: Eugène Buttigieg
Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.
ISBN: 9041131191
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 446

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Book Description
Although it is commonly assumed that consumers benefit from the application of competition law, this is not necessarily always the case. Economic efficiency is paramount; thus, competition law in Europe and antitrust law in the United States are designed primarily to protect business competitors (and in Europe to promote market integration), and it is only incidentally that such law may also serve to protect consumers. That is the essential starting point of this penetrating critique. The author explores the extent to which US antitrust law and EC competition law adequately safeguard consumer interests. Specifically, he shows how the two jurisdictions have gone about evaluating collusive practices, abusive conduct by dominant firms and merger activity, and how the policies thus formed have impacted upon the promotion of consumer interests. He argues that unless consumer interests are directly and specifically addressed in the assessment process, maximization of consumer welfare is not sufficiently achieved. Using rigorous analysis he develops legal arguments that can accomplish such goals as the following: replace the economic theory of 'consumer welfare' with a principle of consumer well-being; build consumer benefits into specific areas of competition policy; assess competition cases so that income distribution effects are more beneficial to consumers; and control mergers in such a way that efficiencies are passed directly to consumers. The author argues that, in the last analysis, the promotion of consumer well-being should be the sole or at least the primary goal of any antitrust regime. Lawyers and scholars interested in the application and development and reform of competition law and policy will welcome this book. They will find not only a fresh approach to interpretation and practice in their field - comparing and contrasting two major systems of competition law - but also an extremely lucid analysis of the various economic arguments used to highlight the consumer welfare enhancing or welfare reducing effects of business practices.

Author: Barbora Jedlicková
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1783477741
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Theoretical discussions among competition lawyers and economists on the approach to Resale resale Price price Maintenance maintenance (RPM) and Vertical vertical Territorial territorial Restrictions restrictions (VTR) have often caused controversy. However, commentators agree that there is a lack of comprehensive study surrounding the topic. This book explores these two forms of anticompetitive conduct from legal, historical, economical, and theoretical points of view, focusing on the EU and US experiences. The author expertly goes beyond the current legal practice to explain, among other things, what approach should apply to RPM and VTR, and why RPM and VTR are introduced in situations where procompetitive theories would not make economic sense, or do not apply in practice. The book takes account of economic values, such as efficiency and welfare, as well as other values, such as freedom, fairness and free competition. Scholars and students of law will find the book’s depth of legal, economic and historical analysis to be a rich contribution to the scholarship. This book will also be of use to EU and US practitioners, and enforcers dealing with RPM and VTR cases.

Author: Keith N. Hylton
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1849805288
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
In this outstanding new book Professor Keith Hylton and his collaborators examine what antitrust law has become over the past ten years, a time in which economic analysis has become its undisputed core. What has become of the old antitrust doctrine, what are the new issues for the immediate future? This book brings together the leading experts to examine this silent revolution at the core of US domestic policy. Mark Grady, UCLA School of Law, US Hylton s Antitrust Law and Economics brings together many of the best authors writing in antitrust today. Their essays range widely, covering proof of agreement under the Sherman Act, group boycotts, monopolization and essential facilities, tying and other vertical restraints, and merger policy. The writing is clear, accessible but still technically sophisticated and comprehensive. This book represents the best in contemporary antitrust scholarship, by authors who understand and are able to communicate the centrality of economic analysis to antitrust. No antitrust lawyer, serious antitrust student, or antitrust economist should be without this book. Herbert Hovenkamp, University of Iowa College of Law, US This comprehensive book provides an extensive overview of the major topics of antitrust law from an economic perspective. Its in-depth treatment and analysis of both the law and economics of antitrust is presented via a collection of interconnected original essays. The contributing authors are among the most influential scholars in antitrust, with a rich diversity of backgrounds. Their entries cover, amongst other issues, predatory pricing, essential facilities, tying, vertical restraints, enforcement, mergers, market power, monopolization standards, and facilitating practices. This well-organized and substantial work will be invaluable to professors of American antitrust law and European competition law, as well as students specializing in competition law. It will also be an important reference for professors and graduate students of economics and business.