Whereas the EU's internal market rules govern market access and public intervention, its competition rules are concerned with the market conduct of private parties. When do the competition rules apply to healthcare? In principle the scope for application of the competition rules to the...

This paper offers a complete overview of the oligopoly problem in competition law and economics, with a specific focus on European Union (EU) law. A related purpose of the paper is to challenge the dominant view that merger control is the ultimate preventive remedy against tacit collusion. On...

This paper addresses some fundamental issues surrounding Pakistan's contemporary competition law regime put in place by the enactment of the Competition Act, 2010. The paper comprises three parts and a conclusion. The first describes the globalization of competition laws - as has been the case...

This paper aims at highlighting the Commission's approach towards the relation between sector specific regulation and general competition law, especially concerning energy markets and the road to Internal Market objective.We firstly present Trinko case, in order to focus on two crucial and...

In this paper we criticize the so-called 'more economic approach' to European competition law for its disregard of the importance of a functional system of private law. The more economic approach presumes that vertical integration is an economically efficient governance-mechanism. This...

This article discusses two elements that the draft EU Directive on actions for damages treats only perfunctorily. The first concerns lucrum cessans or the quantity effect which is found to be of a relatively higher magnitude than the price effect. The second concerns the difficulties of...

In dealing with applications for injunctive relief by the holders of FRAND-encumbered SEPs in the course of protracted licensing negotiations, any legal system faces the challenge of reaching the proper balance between predictability for stakeholders and differentiation between possible...

Writers, economists and IP scholars have hailed signs of an incipient shift to a post-scarcity world. Driving this change are rapid decreases not only in marginal cost, but also in the fixed or first-unit costs of production. Whether these changes become economy-wide, or remain confined to a...

The latest frontier of the essential facility doctrine under EU competition law is the use of antitrust rules to impose on dominant firms a duty to invest in infrastructure development. While a genuine lack of capacity has traditionally been considered an objective justification for a refusal to...