On November 18, 2008, China's Ministry of Commerce ("MOFCOM"), the Chinese merger control authority, approved InBev's takeover of Anheuser-Busch, with certain restrictions. The InBev Decision is the only published decision that MOFCOM has made to date following the implementation of China's...

These are the introduction and concluding remarks to an edited volume on Competition policy and regulation, recent developments in China, the US and Europe. The introduction to the volume sketches that the reason for writing a volume comparing China, the US and Europe is the recent enactment of...

China’s anti-monopoly law contains comprehensive legal rules against monopolistic/collusive agreements. However, the legal standards for defining monopolistic agreements and the applicability of exemption and leniency programs need to be further clarified. Moreover, several coordination...

China, like a number of other antitrust jurisdictions, has a law concerning unfair pricing. This article develops an economic framework for applying the unfair pricing law in China. The framework draws on the experience of courts and competition authorities in other jurisdictions and the...

This paper develops a simple model in which the government has asymmetric information about a monopolistic firm's marginal costs of providing an infrastructure service. The model is used to analyze the impact of asymmetric information and the threat of regulatory capture on optimal universal...

China's Anti-Monopoly Law went into effect on August 1, 2008. Even though enforcement authorities tend to build their capacity progressively, China has already seen three milestone case decisions in the past year: InBev/Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola/Huiyuan, and Mitsubishi Rayon/Lucite. In this...

The recent development of China’s Antimonopoly Law has caught the attention of governments, academia, and businesses. Although China has laws that address anticompetitive conduct and institutions to enforce them, they are disparate and do not constitute a comprehensive...

In this paper, we provide some background on the merger approval process in China and the InBev acquisition, and then discuss the implications of MOFCOM’s decision and its other statements on merger policy for the future of merger control in China.

This paper develops a model to analyze the impacts of asymmetric information on optimal universal, service policy in the public utilities of developing countries. Optimal universal service policy is implemented using two regulatory instruments: pricing and network investment. Under...