Competition Law and Policy and Economic Development in Developing Countries

Competition law scholarship has long invoked the role of competition law and policy in economic development in developing countries. More recently, the highly visible efforts to enact this legislation has been one of the most remarkable trends in their regulatory reform process. Assuming that there is a correlation between the economic growth and the introduction of this regime, this article attempts to address this hypothesis to a limited extent and asks whether this link is positive. After presenting the current competition law and policy landscape in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) as case studies and examining the performances of their endeavours, this article concludes that there is no simple answer to the question about the desirability of this reform because the incentives for this introductory option are various. More specifically, the effects of the competition regime on the macroeconomic outcomes have not been fully explored in contemporary development literature and the evaluations of its impacts have produced ambivalent results. Most importantly, this law is just one component of a broader policy mix in this developmental dimension and developing countries need a lot of support in the enforcement legislation. Finally, this article suggests way for developing countries to be more open and inclusive in the competition law community: participation in the international cooperation in competition issues. The prominence of this debate may shed more light in the current status of this discipline in developing countries