At least since the early 1980s, the core principles of merger enforcement policy have been stable. Horizontal mergers that create, enhance, or facilitate the exercise of market power and vertical transactions that adversely affect horizontal competition are condemned, and consumer welfare is the...

The decade of enforcement of EU competition rules under the decentralized enforcement system introduced by the Regulation 1/2003 has turned the national competition authorities (NCAs) into the primary enforcers of the Articles 101 and 102 TFEU. Despite the substantial number of investigations...

We focus on the question of why firms self-regulate to avoid more severe public regulation in the area of antitrust compliance. We distinguish the effects of an antitrust authority's outreach and enforcement on firms' adoption of antitrust compliance programs. Furthermore, we examine the...

Based on a sample of 64 cartels convicted by the European Commission from 1975 to 2009 and a methodology allowing to estimate restitution and dissuasive fines to be imposed on cartels from microeconomic variables on a case by case basis, this paper compares the level of fines actually inflicted...

The enforcement policy of the Egyptian Competition Law reveals that there are two varying approaches in relation to the concept of related parties/single economic unit. The first requires for parties to be related, to be active in the same relevant market. This created discrepancies in practice....

Consumers suffer from high drug prices, which stem in large part from pharmaceutical companies’ anticompetitive games. This essay discusses the crucial role antitrust enforcement agencies can play in addressing pay-for-delay settlements and product hopping and draws lessons from this...

The present paper analyzes the interaction between the economic review of the probition of abuses of a dominant position (Article 82 EC) on the one hand and the efforts to enhance private enforcement of competition law through private damage claims on the other hand. The paper argues that...

Competition law has proliferated around the world. Due to data limitations, however, there is little systematic information about the substance and enforcement of these laws. In this paper, we address that problem by introducing two new datasets on competition law regimes around the world....

The purpose of this paper is to describe the institutions of antitrust enforcement in the United States and to test those institutions against a set of norms used to assess the operations of administrative agencies. The paper is part of a broader project studying global administrative agencies....

We provide a comprehensive quantitative assessment of cartels and the related cartel enforcement process in the European Union (EU) from 2001 to 2015. In a first step, we present a detailed characterization of all cartel cases decided by the European Commission (EC) with respect to various...