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Competition law
Basic concepts
Anti-competitive practices
Laws and doctrines

United States

Europe

  • European Community
    competition law
  • Irish Competition Law
  • Competition Act 1998 (U. Competition law history refers to attempts by governments to regulate Competitive markets for goods and services leading up to the modern competition or Antitrust The term "monopolization" refers to an offense under Section 2 of the American Sherman Antitrust Act, passed in 1890 In Economics and Business ethics, a coercive monopoly is a business concern that prohibits competitors from entering the field with the natural result being that Natural monopoly is a term used in Economics to refer to two different things In Economics and especially in the theory of Competition, barriers to entry are obstacles in the path of a firm which wants to enter a given Market In Economics, market power is the ability of a firm to alter the Market price of a good or service In Competition law, before deciding whether companies have significant Market power which would justify government intervention the test of Small but Significant and Non-transitory In Competition law the Relevant market defines the market in which one or more goods compete Merger control refers to the procedure of reviewing Mergers and acquisitions under Antitrust / competition law Anti-competitive practices are Business or Government practices that prevent and/or reduce Competition in a Market (see Restraint of trade Collusion is an agreement usually secretive which occurs between two or more persons to deceive mislead or defraud others of their legal rights or to obtain an objective forbidden A cartel is a formal (explicit agreement among firms Cartels usually occur in an oligopolistic industry, where there is a small number of sellers and usually involve Price fixing is an agreement between business competitors to sell the same product or service at the same price Product bundling is a Marketing strategy that involves offering several products for sale as one combined product Tying is the practice of making the sale of one good (the tying good to the De facto or De jure customer conditional on the purchase of a second distinctive Refusal to deal is one of several Anti-competitive practices forbidden in countries which have Free market economies In Competition law, a group boycott is a type of Secondary boycott in which two or more competitors in a Relevant market refuse to conduct business Exclusive dealing refers to when a retailer or wholesaler is ‘tied’ to purchase from a supplier on the understanding that no other distributor will be appointed or receive supplies Bid rigging is an illegal agreement between two or more competitors Dividing territories (also Market division) is an agreement by two companies to stay out of each other's way and reduce competition in the agreed-upon territories Conscious parallelism is a term used in Competition law to describe Price-fixing between competitors in an Oligopoly that occurs without an actual spoken Predatory pricing (also known as destroyer pricing) is the practice of a firm selling a product at very low price with the intent of driving competitors out of the Market In United States patent law, patent misuse is an Affirmative defense used in patent litigation when a Defendant has been accused to have Copyright misuse is an equitable defense against Copyright infringement in the United States based on the unreasonable conduct of United States antitrust law is the body of Laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior (monopoly and Unfair business practices. The Sherman Antitrust Act ( Sherman Act, July 2, 1890, ch 647,) was the first United States Federal statute to limit Cartels and The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 ( October 15[[ 914]] ch 323, codified at,) was enacted in the United States to add further substance to the U The Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 (15 USC §§ 41-58 as amended) established the Federal Trade Commission (FTC a Bipartisan body of five members The Merger guidelines are a set of internal rules promulgated by the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ in conjunction with the The essential facilities doctrine (sometimes also referred to as the essential facility doctrine) is a Legal doctrine which describes a particular type of claim of The Noerr-Pennington doctrine is a doctrine of United States Antitrust law set forth by the United States Supreme Court in a pair of cases which The rule of reason is a doctrine developed by the United States Supreme Court in its interpretation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. European Community competition law is one of the areas of authority of the European Union. Irish Competition Law is the Irish body of legal rules designed to ensure fairness and freedom in the Marketplace. The Competition Act 1998 is the current major source of competition policy in the UK along with Enterprise Act 2002. K. )

Australia
Enforcement authorities and organizations
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The Robinson-Patman Act of 1936 (or Anti-Price Discrimination Act, 15 U.S.C. § 13) is a United States federal law that prohibits what were considered, at the time of passage, to be anticompetitive practices by producers, specifically price discrimination. The Trade Practices Act 1974 is an act of the Parliament of Australia. The International Competition Network is an informal virtual network that seeks to facilitate cooperation between Competition law authorities globally A competition regulator is a Government agency, typically a statutory authority, sometimes called an economic regulator, which regulates and enforces Title 15 of the United States Code outlines the role of the commerce and trade in the United States Code. The law of the United States was originally largely derived from the Common law system of English law, which was in force at the time of the Revolutionary Price discrimination exists when sales of identical goods or services are transacted at different Prices from the same provider It grew out of practices in which chain stores were allowed to purchase goods at lower prices than other retailers. Chain stores are Retail outlets that share a Brand and central management and usually have standardized business methods and practices The Act provided for criminal penalties, but contained a specific exemption for "cooperative associations". The Act is an amendment to Section 2 of the Clayton Act. The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 ( October 15[[ 914]] ch 323, codified at,) was enacted in the United States to add further substance to the U

In general, the Act prohibits sales that discriminate in price on the sale of goods to equally-situated distributors when the effect of such sales is to reduce competition. Price means net price and includes all compensation paid. The seller may not throw in additional goods or services. Injured parties or the US government may bring an action under the Act.

Liability under section 2(a) of the Act (with criminal sanctions) may arise on sales that involve:

"It shall be unlawful for any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such commerce, knowingly to induce or receive a discrimination in price which is prohibited by this section. "

Defenses to the Act include cost justification and matching the price of a competitor. In practice, the "harm to competition" requirement often is the make-or-break point.

Sales to Military Exchanges and Commissaries are exempt from the act.

The United States Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have joint responsibilities for enforcement of the antitrust laws. For animal rights group see Justice Department (JD The United States Department of Justice ( DOJ) is a Cabinet department The Federal Trade Commission ( FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act Though the FTC has some overlapping responsibilities with the Department of Justice, and although the Robinson Patman Act is an amendment to the Clayton Act, the Robinson Patman act is not widely considered to be in the core area of the antitrust laws. The FTC is active in enforcement of the Robinson Patman Act and the Department of Justice is not.

This act is one in a category of regulatory enactments which attempt to control price discriminations -- or different prices for identical products. Similar prohibitions on discrimination have been found in specialized regulatory systems, such as those relating to transportation and communications.

Such statutes typically have exceptions, or restrictions on range of application, similar to those set out in the Robinson Patman Act, to allow for differences in costs of output and distribution, and differences in the degree of competition facing a vendor.

Critics of such legislation tend to suggest that it is better to rely on competition to police such differences in customer treatment by vendors than to rely on detailed government intervention in the mechanics of pricing and service or product delivery, with all the costs of practice detection and policing which such intervention details, and with the chilling effect of government monitoring on market creativity and flexibility.

That is, the argument is that price differentials yielding above average market returns will attract rivals who will undercut the differentials. Further, such critics suggest that in dynamic economies, entrepreneurs will create products and services which for a while allow above-normal return, and then these returns will be attrited by competitive forces.

In this 'gale of creative destruction', the possibilities of above average returns generates technical and organizational innovation. Market forces -- the responses of potential competitors -- then assure widespread dissemination of the consumer surplus generated by such innovation, and more-even sharing of such surplus between the producers and the consumers of goods and services.

A frequent response to such criticism is that the competitive responses may take a long time to appear, and be incomplete in effect. That is, in conventional market organization terms, 'natural monopolies' may last a long time. Implicit in this criticism is the judgment that the 'consumer surplus', or welfare gain to the society as a whole from the economic undertaking in question, should be distributed in proportions near that reached in highly competitive markets, and that State intervention is able to effect that result without the economic costs of the State undertaking exceeding the benefits to the society of the State intervention.

One can also see this debate, as it works out in particular industries and at particular times, as a tug of war over gains of production between competing interest groups -- e. g. producers and, in a larger category, owners, on the one hand and on the other hand buyers, in particular, often, individual consumers. The parties to this tug of war may have limited cognition and time horizons, as in all circumstances.

Those in favor of great reliance on competitive market forces frequently suggest that representatives of consumer groups who opt for State intevention of the sort involved in the Robinson Patman Act and other regulatory legislation (not all consumer groups do so opt in all circumstances) do not take a sufficiently long view of the gains to be had by letting markets work, and trust overly much group intervention mechanisms, to their own long term detriment.

See the thinking of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, and Milton Friedman, among others. Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (ˈluːtvɪç fɔn ˈmiːzəs ( September 29, 1881 – October 10, 1973) was an Austrian Friedrich August von Hayek CH ( May 8, 1899 March 23, 1992) was an Austrian British Economist Milton Friedman (July 31 1912 November 16 2006 was an American Nobel Laureate Economist and Public intellectual. Leading ‘think tanks’ in Washington, the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute frequently advise reliance on competitive market forces in particular situations coming to public attention, as do the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington D The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI is a conservative Think tank, founded in 1943 The Cato Institute is a Libertarian Think tank headquartered in Washington D The Heritage Foundation is an American conservative Think tank.

See also in this encyclopedia Price Skimming and Microeconomics. Microeconomics is a branch of Economics that studies how individuals households and firms and some states make decisions to allocate limited resources typically in markets

See also

External links

The Sherman Antitrust Act ( Sherman Act, July 2, 1890, ch 647,) was the first United States Federal statute to limit Cartels and The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 ( October 15[[ 914]] ch 323, codified at,) was enacted in the United States to add further substance to the U The Celler-Kefauver Act is a United States federal law passed in 1950 that reformed and strengthened the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 which had amended the The Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 (Public Law 94-435 known commonly as the HSR Act) is a set of amendments to the Antitrust laws of the
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