In previous work, little evidence of share-price response to Australian price-fixing investigations was found. However, these investigations often involve a small part of a company's operations and antitrust penalties have tended to be relatively small; in fact, some weak support was found for a...

David Round presented The Merits of a Merit Review process for Regulatory Decisions: Why New Zealand should have It at the Contemporary Issues in Regulatory Theory and Practice half day workshop held in Wellington in March 2005.

Bob Baxt, the third chairman of the Trade Practices Commission, served for a single three-year term from 1988 to 1991. He followed Bob McComas, who had deliberately adopted a non-litigious approach to preserving the competitive process. Baxt was far more proactive and sought to push the...

The 1965 legislation to curb restrictive trade practices has been widely regarded as weak. By contrast, the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) has been considered as providing the platform for a more comprehensive competition policy. This paper argues that the 1965-67 and 1971 Acts were more...

The criminalization of serious cartel conduct faces many practical and operational challenges, and no doubt the first criminal case will be strongly opposed. A crucial early task is to identify the bright line between cartel conduct that is criminal and that which is not.

The criminalisation of anti-competitive behaviour such as price fixing has long been a feature of US antitrust law. Some European countries have introduced criminal penalties for price fixing while in others the matter is under debate. Australia introduced such laws in 2009. Of critical...