The paper addresses the paradox that, although it is generally recognised among economists that minimum and fixed resale price maintenance can have both positive and negative effects on consumer welfare, the current approach under EC competition law can still be characterised as a de facto per...

Hybrid governance structures between markets and hierarchies in many industries, e.g., in energy and telecommunications, challenge antitrust and regulation policy. The paper focusses on the theoretical and methodological basis provided by the New Institutional Economics (NIE) for analyzing the...

On February 2, 2017, the European Commission announced the launch on its own initiative of three sets of investigations into suspected anticompetitive behavior in online commerce.2 The three sectors inquired have been (i) consumer electronics manufacturers; (ii) video games publishers; and (iii)...

The ministerial proposal for a 10th amendment of the German competition law particularly addresses abuse control and seeks to tighten this pillar of competition policy against the background of the challenges from the digital economy. Next to extending the classic policy instruments of abuse...

In a case currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court the court has been urged to overrule the longstanding per se illegality rule presently applicable to minimum resale price maintenance, or RPM. Over the past fifty years antitrust theorists and economists have advanced several...

Over the past fifty years antitrust theorists and economists have advanced several pro-competitive explanations for minimum resale price maintenance [RPM]. Additionally, scholars have argued that non-price vertical restraints (such as territorial exclusivity) and RPM have similar effects on...

In a recent working paper, Damien Geradin & Caio Marioda Silva Pereira Neto argue that the Brazilian competition system would greatly benefit from the adoption of guidelines like the European Commission Guidance Paper, which offers a legal and economic methodology to implement an...