Competition Policy and Law – An Overview竞争政策和法律–概述.doc

Competition Policy and Law – An Overview Madhav Mehra The principal objective of competition policy is to foster competition as an instrument for accelerating growth. The policy is meant to fuel innovation and create market efficiencies that offers better products and lower prices thus benefitting consumers and maximising welfare. . Competition law is the enactment of that policy and achieves its objectives in three ways: (1) prohibiting anti-competition agreements and practices that harm free trade and competition; (2) preventing abuse of dominant position and anti-competitive practices that lead to such a dominant position; (3) regulating mergers and acquisitions. Competition is irrefutably beneficial for every market participant. Competitive markets give consumers wider choice and lower prices. It gives sellers stronger incentives to minimize their costs through innovation and other productivity enhancing techniques. This enables firms to pass on cost savings to the customers and offer better products and greater choice at lower prices. Nonetheless the gap between the assumptions of such theories and the market realities and practices both in developing and developed countries remains pervasive. While there is a broad consensus on the competition policy objectives there is considerable divergence in the application and practice of competition law leading to question marks about its effectiveness . Even in a mature jurisdiction like United States with over a century of experience, the application of antitrust laws has not moved beyond semantics. The alternating views on the reductive and expansive interpretations of the law have led to confusing and apparently contradictory judgments on antitrust cases that has belied the hopes and aspirations of lawmakers and the stakeholders. Competition law poses more a public policy challenge than a legal argument. Indeed US antitrust decisions in the first half of twentieth century exhibited hostility to large suc