The paper revisits the conventional wisdom according to which vertical restrictions on retail prices help upstream firms to collude. We analyse the scope for collusion with and without resale price maintenance (RPM) when retailers observe local shocks on demand or retail costs. In the absence of...

This paper explores options for governments of Central and East European countries to increase the sensitivity of competition law enforcement to trade and investment policy, thereby supporting a liberal trade policy stance. The competition laws of these countries tend to resemble European Union...

This Paper shows that predation might help firms overcome the free riding problem of mergers by changing the acquisition situation in the buyer's favour relative to the firms outside the merger. It is also shown that the bidding competition for the prey's assets is most harmful to predators when...

This paper studies how the presence of an antitrust authority affects market-sharing agreements made by firms. These agreements prevent firms from entering each other's market. The set of these agreements defines a collusive network, which is pursued by antitrust authorities. This article shows...

The Productivity Commission's final research report responds to a request by the Treasurer, on behalf of the Australian and New Zealand Governments. The objective of the study has been to examine the potential to improve the trans-Tasman business environment through greater coordination,...

Recent decisions by the Spanish national competition authority (TDC) mandate payment systems to include only two costs when setting their domestic multilateral interchange fees (MIF): a fixed processing cost and a variable cost for the risk of fraud. This artificial lowering of MIFs will not...

Adequate remuneration of temporary overdrafts must reflect their nature and allow full competition among banks in formulating the pricing in a context of simplicity, transparency and comparability for the customers.

We examine the effect of the Amnesty Plus policy on the incentives of firms to engage in cartel activities. Amnesty Plus is aimed at attracting amnesty applications by encouraging firms, convicted in one market, to report their collusive agreements in other markets. It has been vigorously...

We believe the rules set out in the Draft Guidelines for the treatment of standardization agreements under Article 101 risk chilling innovation and, in some industries, also undermining the process of standardization. Anne Layne-Farrar & Jorge Padilla (LECG)

Do the Draft Guidelines seek to define problems and propose solutions in a manner that may be interpreted as reflecting a bias against the legitimate and pro-competitive exercise of intellectual property rights? Richard Taffet (Bingham)