In competition law, the problem of the optimal design of institutional and procedural rules concerns assessment processes of the pro- and anticompetitiveness of business behaviors. This is well recognized in the discussion about the relative merits of different assessment principles such as the...

Competition policy and intellectual property rights (IPR) protection policy play a significant role in the innovation-based economic development. The authors of this work consider different combinations of these policies through the lens of discrete structural alternatives assuming opportunities...

The European Court of Justice’s definition of when a firm has a dominant position <p> has recently come under attack as being meaningless and impossible to measure. We argue that <p> both attacks are wrong, suggest an economic interpretation of domination and propose how it may <p> be measured using...</p></p></p>

We discuss strategic ways that sellers can use tying and bundling with requirement conditions to extract consumer surplus. We analyze different types of tying and bundling creating (i) intra-product price discrimination; (ii) intra-consumer price discrimination; and (iii) inter-product price...

We provide an explanation for tying not based on any of the standard arguments: efficiency, price discrimination, or exclusion. In our analysis a monopolist ties a complementary good to its monopolized good, but consumers do not use the tied good. The tie is profitable because it shifts profits...

The challenge of effective merger enforcement is tremendous. U.S. antitrust agencies must, by statute, quickly forecast the competitive effects of mergers that occur in virtually every sector of the economy to determine if mergers can proceed. Surprisingly, given the complexity of the regulators...

The challenge of effective merger enforcement is tremendous. U.S. antitrust agencies must, by statute, quickly forecast the competitive effects of mergers that occur in virtually every sector of the economy to determine if mergers can proceed. Surprisingly, given the complexity of the regulators...

Most late 19th-century US economists gave a rather cool welcome to the Sherman Act (1890) and, though less harshly, to the Clayton and FTC Acts (1914). A large literature has identified several explanations for this surprising attitude, calling into play the relation between big business and...

This paper examines the strength of product market competition and economic performance in Canada and discusses way in which the institutional framework governing competition policy could be improved. Competitive forces are comparatively strong and administrative and economic regulations...