Search results

There are two opposite views about whether the Antitrust Law is conducive to the development of the economy. One view is that the Antitrust Law can restrain monopoly, maintain market competition and benefit economic growth. The other view is that the Antitrust Law inhibits innovation by monopolistic firms and fosters rent-seeking, which is bad for economic growth. To provide a possible perspective for clarifying the controversy, this paper aims to answer the following two questions: first, will the Antitrust Law inhibit corporate innovation? Second, does the antitrust enforcement agency discriminate against private enterprises?

Based on the samples of A-share listed companies from 2003 to 2013, the authors use the implementation of China’s Antitrust Law in 2008 as a policy shock, take the monopoly enterprises in each industry as the treatment group and competitive enterprises as the control group, using the difference-in-differences method to test the impact of the implementation of the Antitrust Law on corporate innovation activities.

The results show that compared with competitive enterprises, the patent output of monopolistic enterprises was significantly reduced after the implementation of the Antitrust Law, which indicates that the Antitrust Law does inhibit the innovation activities of monopolistic enterprises. Further research finds that the innovation suppression effect of the Antitrust Law is more prominent in state-owned enterprises, which means that the government does not have “selective law enforcement” against private enterprises in the process of law enforcement. Therefore, the results provide evidence for the idea that government intervention is neutral.

First, the paper enriches and expands the research on the factors affecting corporate innovation from the perspective of market structure. Second, it enriches and expands relevant research on the consequences of implementing the Antitrust Law from the perspective of corporate innovation. Third, it not only provides the relevant empirical evidence for clarifying the dispute about the Antitrust Law but also is helpful to clarify whether the Chinese Government has “selective law enforcement” against private enterprises.

While recent years have seen a remarkable relaxation of the antitrust laws, these laws are not yet dead. Moreover, what is permitted in the United States might well be illegal in the European Economic Community. American business managers therefore should proceed carefully in taking advantage of the trend to relax antitrust laws.

Research in the discipline of antitrust economics, which encompasses legal as well as economic aspects, reveals a young and expanding area that has established its own literature within the past twenty years. The citations in this bibliographic essay were selected for their particular relevance to the subject and represent a core collection of materials that would be most useful to the study of American antitrust economics.

Antitrust legislation in the United States was originally enacted in 1890. This legislation and subsequent amendments established the historic precedent of government controlling the power of business by limiting its influence over markets. This paper reflects on why this unique set of laws was originally enacted, reviews these laws in the United States compared to other global competitors, and recommends revisions in the present legislation to more accurately reflect the competitive arena that United States based companies face in the global economy.

This paper aims to draw attention to a broad range of experimental institutional initiatives which operate in the absence of a global antitrust regime. The purpose of this paper is to offer food for thought to scholars in other fields of international trade law facing challenges from divergent national regimes.

Taking inspiration from political science literature on institutions, this paper crafts a broad analytical lens which captures various organisational forms (including networks), codes (including soft law) and culture (including epistemic communities). The strength and shortcomings of traditional “bricks and mortar” institutions such as the European Union (EU) and General Agreement Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organisation are first examined. Then, the innovative global network of International Competition Network (ICN) is analysed.

It highlights the value of the global antitrust epistemic community in providing a conducive environment for extensive recourse to “soft law”. Examples from the EU and the ICN include measures which find expression in enforcement tools and networks. These initiatives can be seen as experimental responses to the challenges of divergent national antitrust regimes.

It is desktop research rather than empirical field work.

To raise awareness outside the antitrust scholarly community of the variety of experimental institutional initiatives which have evolved, often on a soft law basis, in response to the challenges experienced by national enforcement agencies and businesses operating in the absence of a global antitrust regime.

It offers some personal reflections on the ICN from the author’s experience as a non-governmental advisor. It draws attention to the ICN’s underappreciated range of educational materials which are freely available on its website to everyone. It submits that the ICN template offers interesting ideas for other fields of international trade law where a global regime is unrealisable. The ICN is a voluntary virtual network of agencies collaborating to agree ways to reduce clashes among national regimes. Its goal of voluntary convergence is portrayed as standardisation rather than as absolute congruence. Even if standardisation of norms/processes is too ambitious a goal in other fields of international trade law, the ICN model still offers inspiration as an epistemic community within an inclusive and dynamic forum for encouraging debate and creating a culture of learning opportunities where familiarity and trust is fostered.

The purpose of this paper is to understand why managers, internal auditors and compliance staff (in financial firms specifically and using Malaysia as a concrete example) can want to ignore compliance-related legislation (a law on anticompetitive behaviour in this case).

The authors review, discuss and critique the literature on compliance and institutions in the light of existing data from Malaysia’s financial industry (literally confronting theory with data).

Legislative design can actually encourage managers and their auditors disobey/ignore the law for reasons which previous theories cannot explain.

This research does not use the regression techniques in vogue now. The findings, nevertheless, imply that attempts to explain phenomenon in management auditing should start with the laws governing managerial activity.

Auditors may use the methods used in this study to assess the extent to which financial services firms’ managers have incentives to comply with laws. Similarly, this research can quantify the extent to which internal auditors in these firms have incentives to find untoward conduct.

Poorly designed laws affecting managerial auditing derive from pre-existing social relationships, as well as help shape them (as shown using data). Identifying areas of non-compliance may actually signal deeper problems in the way businessmen and lawmakers make and enforce laws requiring compliance and self-assessment.

The authors know of no study looking at the economic incentives driving internal auditors’ behaviour – particularly in the area of antitrust. They show how law shapes management and auditors’ incentives, quantify these incentives and show how/why previous research fails to explain these incentives.

In the absence of a clear property rights regime in outer space, commodification might bypass several legal considerations and instill a regime through customary practice, which could collide with international space law ethics, and thus, erode the corpus juris spatialis. The purpose of this paper is to find a way to prevent such an erosion.

Through an interdisciplinary review of the literature pertaining to space law, space property rights, economic goods, resources and commodities, this paper explores potential solutions to prevent further fragmentation of the corpus juris spatialis when confronted with the elusive transnational lex mercatoria dynamics and potential commodification of the space ecosystem.

This paper explores solutions to prevent this outcome through decentralized frameworks ranging from polycentric governance to a new “space antitrust” regime. Polycentric governance could prove very useful to address the plurality of space property rights and their complexity while space antitrust would not be precluded to intervene in a commoditized space market. Commodities benefited in the past from a certain antitrust immunity, however, due to globalization, technological development and deregulation, commodities have become more competitive, and therefore, the immunity is being gradually overturned.

This paper explores the benefits of unlocking antitrust potential forces into channeling, hand in hand with polycentricity, the development of the space ecosystem in light of international space law ethics. “Space antitrust” could become a discipline per se and better resonate with non-traditional stakeholders in the space sector in a context of commercialization and commodification of resources. Today, benefit-sharing causes debate among spacefaring nations in terms of property rights. However, it could be enforced through competition law dynamics.

The purpose of this research is to identify five lessons of the Trinko decision and apply them to internet access issues.

The research identifies five lessons and then relates these lessons to access issues involving the internet.

Based on application of the lessons of Trinko, it is likely that access to the public internet will be maintained but it is uncertain as to what the nature of access requirements will be, if any, for private internets.

The research provides an economic analysis of the milestone legal decision in Trinko and applies the lessons of Trinko to access issues involving the internet.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the background and reasoning behind the June 18, 2007 US Supreme Court decision in Credit Suisse Securities (USA) v. Billing et al.

The paper explains the US District Court for the Southern District of New York's dismissal of two antitrust class action lawsuits filed against a group of investment banks in 2002, the reversal by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2005, and the Supreme Court's rejection of the Second Circuit's analysis in 2007.

The Court found that, due to the specialized knowledge required to parse the SEC's rules and distinguish permissible from prohibited conduct, there was a “serious risk” that antitrust courts would produce inconsistent results. The Court also expressed a concern that allowing antitrust claims here would weaken the heightened pleading requirements in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, which Congress passed to weed out “umeritorious securities lawsuits.”

The decision undoubtedly will have important implications regarding the extent to which the antitrust laws may be applied to other conduct regulated by the securities laws, or in the context of other regulated industries.

The paper provides practical interpretation and guidance by experienced securities lawyers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the practical and legal challenges and barriers to the development of a private action in antitrust controls and to project those onto a consideration of the development of such rights of action through a case study of Brazil.

The paper provides a critical review of both the theoretical and practical barriers to the development of private rights of action, drawing upon the history of development in both the USA and in Europe and the regular considerations of policy and law making, through debate at the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development. This comparative and historical analysis is projected into models of design and delivery for consideration by law makers.

Despite the different legal traditions and policy considerations of the different jurisdictions, the fundamental design of a common action pan‐jurisdictions and outwith conflict of law principles might be possible. The paper proposes a design framework to facilitate and achieve this. The case‐study of Brazil presents an interesting and recent context, and illustration, of this process.

The paper provides an historical and comparative account of the development of private rights actions in this area and provides, to the law maker, a framework and set of legal principles and practical enforcement and design guidelines. This framework and its guidelines should assist those countries seeking to introduce such rights of action in the policy area of antitrust control.

The historical and comparative approach draws together in one paper a contemporary global position in this area of law development.