This volume examines the controversy surrounding the use of competition law to combat excessive pricing. While high or monopolistic pricing is not regarded as an antitrust violation in the US, employing abuse of dominance provisions in competition laws to fight excessive pricing has gained popularity in some BRICS jurisdictions and a number of EU-member states in recent years. The book begins by discussing the economic arguments for and against the prohibition of excessive or unfair prices by firms with market power. It then presents various country studies, focusing on developed countries (such as the UK and Israel) and on the BRICS countries, to highlight various practical challenges involved in recognizing excessive prices as abusive conduct on the part of dominant firms, including how to define, measure and identify excessive prices. The contributors also discuss other policy options that can be used to fight excessive prices in order to protect consumer welfare.

Prosecution of pharmaceutical companies for excessive pricing of products under competition law is now a reality. As recently as a decade ago, such prosecutions were virtually nonexistent. That situation has changed dramatically as competition authorities in Europe and South Africa have pursued a significant number of such prosecutions and have levied substantial fines against the investigated parties. While the United States has traditionally led in policing the pharmaceutical market against anticompetitive misconduct, in this specific arena it has fallen behind, principally because federal courts so far have refused to acknowledge excessive pricing as a cause of action under Section 2 of the Sherman Act. In a succession of cases European competition authorities have demonstrated concretely the way in which excessive pricing prosecutions may be pursued. This article examines those cases in some detail showing the challenges that competition authorities have faced, and how they have gone about addressing them. The successes in Europe should help put to rest arguments regarding the difficulties in ascertaining how pharmaceutical products are priced, particularly for products no longer covered by patents or regulatory market exclusivity. The South African competition authority is undertaking its second major prosecution of excessive pricing of originator products. The ongoing case involves an essential anticancer medicine the pricing of which has deprived individuals in South Africa of life-saving treatment. Methodologies for investigating and analyzing abusive pricing are being regularized. This is important because competition authorities around the world should be able to rely on generally accepted standards for pursuing misconduct. This article suggests doctrinal improvements in the form of per se baseline rules for establishing excess with respect to generics, and rule of reason balancing tests for assessing the fairness of pricing practices for originator products and generics not encompassed by per se rules. The continued evolution of excessive pricing doctrine does not depend on these improvements. More important is continuing legal, financial and political support for efforts of competition authorities in this area.Patents, regulatory market exclusivity and other structural features insulate the pharmaceutical market from economic pressures that ordinarily create and re-create an equilibrium that protects consumers. For the pharmaceutical market, there must be a means to redress excessive prices in themselves. Competition law enforcement is an important tool for achieving that redress.#

Excessive pricing is one of the most controversial topics in competition law. Notwithstanding excessive pricing being one of the most blatant forms of abuse, a non-intervention policy tends to be the prevalent choice worldwide. Such a “hands-off” approach is based on the grounds that excessive prices self-correct, as well as practical difficulties in measuring a competitive benchmark and identifying excessiveness, and the fear of distorting ex ante incentives to innovate and invest. This article aims at providing a more balanced approach, which might be particularly useful for small economies, since market failures tend to linger for a longer time in small markets. Accordingly, it reviews the literature concerning the merit of antitrust intervention and the tests proposed to determine when intervention should take place. Then it illustrates the Chilean experience, which shows challenges concerning the scope of competition law; its goals; and principally the identity of a jurisdiction influenced by both the American and the European systems. This work concludes, on a policy level, that antitrust law might have a role to play in excessive pricing cases; and points out that even if hard enforcement is not considered appropriate, soft-enforcement strategies might also be advisable to address excessive prices. On a practical level, this article concludes that jurisdictions where excessive pricing provisions already exist should prefer tests aimed at defining a workable application of such provisions. This paper provides guidelines to determine their enforcement.

This Handbook will be an indispensable reference work for practitioners and scholars, as well as for those in an enforcement environment.

The most important book on antitrust ever written. It shows how antitrust suits adversely affect the consumer by encouraging a costly form of protection for inefficient and uncompetitive small businesses.

Granting rebates to a customer or refusing to supply a competitor are examples of ordinary commercial practices, which become ‘abusive’ under Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU) when carried out by ‘dominant’ firms. This topical book provides an up-to-date account of the emerging trends in the enforcement and interpretation of this provision at both the EU and national level.

Shaping markets through competition and economic regulation is at the heart of addressing the development challenges facing countries in southern Africa. The contributors to Competition Law and Economic Regulation: Addressing Market Power in southern Africa critically assess the efficacy of the competition and economic regulation frameworks, including the impact of a number of the regional competition authorities in a range of sectors throughout southern Africa. Featuring academics as well as practitioners in the field, the book addresses issues common to southern African countries, where markets are small and concentrated, with particularly high barriers to entry, and where the resources to enforce legislation against anti-competitive conduct are limited. What is needed, the contributors argue, is an understanding of competition and regional integration as part of an inclusive growth agenda for Africa. By examining competition and regulation in a single framework, and viewing this within the southern African experience, this volume adds new perspectives to the global competition literature. It is an essential reference tool and will be of great interest to policymakers and regulators, as well as the rapidly growing ecosystem of legal practitioners and economists engaged in the field.