European Competition Law and Economics: A Comparative Perspective

"Lawyers active in the area of competition law increasingly find themselves confronted with the escalating complexity of their field. In addition to the ever growing body of case law, recent developments on the European as well as national level now also underline the relevance of industrial economics' insights in solving hard cases. This book aims at acquainting antitrust students with an interdisciplinary approach to competition law. It reveals the underlying economic rationale of competition rules and shows how the outcome of real-life cases may be influenced by economic insights. The main focus is on European competition law, but examples from US antitrust law and the national laws of the EC member states are equally included to provide a better understanding of what competition lawyers may learn from industrial economics. Evolutions such as the new approach to horizontal co-operation and vertical restraints in EC competition policy, the integration of economic methodology into the direct case assessment as incorporated in the Notice on the definition of the relevant market and the European Court of Justice's Kali and Salz-judgement, prescribing for a correct assessment of mergers to require a dynamic view of the market participants' behaviour, based on, once again, economic analysis - these all point at the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach to competition law. This book thereto presents the economic foundations in a ready-to-use manner across the full spectrum of competition law, in relating these insights with the case law as established across the Community.