Competition Law and Competition Policy: What Does Egypt Really Need?

There is proliferation in the number of developing countries worldwide adopting a competition law. The evidence available indicates that they face sever problems in implementing competition laws. This paper addresses the question of whether Egypt is in need of adopting a competition law. The paper differentiates between the competition policy and the competition law. Adopting a new institutional economics approach, the paper concludes that Egypt is in definite need of a competition policy. However, when it comes to a competition law, given the absence of incentives among the major stakeholders for implementing such a law and given the weak institutional infrastructure that Egypt currently has, emphasizing the need for having a competition law at this current stage is oversold.