This paper was prepared as a background note for discussions on “The Optimal Design, Organisation and Powers of Competition Authorities” taking place at the December 2023 session of the OECD Competition Committee’s Working Party No. 3 on Co-operation and Enforcement.

Fighting poverty remains a top priority and a key challenge to many countries including in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Although LAC countries have strengthened their competition policy in the past decade, poverty has increased in the region, mostly as effect of the recession which...

At the end of 2018, the European Parliament and Council adopted Directive (EU) 2019/1, often referred to as the 'ECN+ Directive', which, among other things, contains provisions ensuring the independence of the competition authorities of the EU Member States (national competition authorities or...

In 1990, Egypt started in collaboration with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund structural economic reforms aiming at following the track of a market-oriented economy rather than its four-decade state-directed one. As a result, there was a need to reconsider the role of government in...

While economic theories indicate that market power by downstream firms can potentially counteract market power upstream, antitrust policy is opaque about whether to incorporate countervailing market power in merger analyses. We use detailed national claims data from the healthcare sector to...

Partisan splits on antitrust enforcement are not new, but some recent divides have gone beyond the usual differences between Republicans and Democrats. Today, we see disagreements among commissioners at the Federal Trade Commission on foundational aspects of competition policy, such as the goals...

Article 3 of Regulation 1/2003 obliges the competition authorities of the EU Member States (national competition authorities or NCAs) to apply Articles 101 and 102 TFEU (EU antitrust law) whenever they apply national competition law to conduct falling within the scope of EU antitrust law....