The internationalisation of antitrust policy is a topic of great contemporary significance and debate. Dr Dabbah provides an inquiry that is at once clearly stated, original and empirical, setting out the relevant issues in the context of law, economics and politics. He draws on the decisional practice of antitrust authorities, actions and statements of political bodies, as well as the decisions of law courts. Providing a detailed examination of the experiences of the European Community and the United States, Dr Dabbah includes a comprehensive examination of central concepts and ideas related to antitrust law and practice. The book concludes by looking forward to potential developments in the landscape and suggests an approach to the internationalisation of antitrust policy. This will be of interest to antitrust officials, as well as international organisations, members of the business community, academics, researchers and policy-makers who are involved in antitrust law and policy.

Moreover, states have powerful incentives to permit domestic industries to exploit outsiders, or even to facilitate such practices. High-profile antitrust conflicts, from the prosecution of Microsoft in state, national, and international forums to the transatlantic disagreement over the European Union's merger policy, illustrate the difficulties. Possible solutions to these problems range from improved intergovernmental cooperation, to direct policy harmonization, to a new regime of "structured competition" in antitrust policy modeled on U.S. corporation law.

This book is a welcome and timely addition to the library of materials exploring the implications of the move from internationalisation of trade towards globalisation. Michael Hutchings, European Competition Law Review This book provides an excellent introduction to the difficult and important issues surrounding international trade and competition policy. Douglas A. Irwin, Dartmouth College, US The opening up of world markets, rapid growth of trade and foreign direct investment create manifold problems for competition policy. Thus, international mergers may have adverse effects on many countries, international cartels may carve up world markets and dominant firms may seek to maintain their global position by exclusionary conduct. These problems have been recognised for more than half a century and some attempts have been made internationally to address them, so far with limited success. This progressive book seeks to explore the problems and concerns that globalisation has created for competition policy. The book begins by setting out the principles of competition and trade policies, and then goes on to address the impact of market globalisation on what are usually thought of as traditional antitrust concerns. These include the analysis of the difficulties arising from collusion and other restrictive practices, government sponsored voluntary co-operation , vertical restrictions and market access, pricing strategies of dominant firms and international mergers, all illustrated with a number of prominent case studies. The author concludes with an illuminating discussion on the feasibility of international co-operation on competition policy, the faltering progress that has been made so far and the prospects for future advances. This comprehensive volume will prove to be an invaluable resource to students and scholars of law and economics. It will also find wide appeal amongst researchers, policy makers and practitioners with an interest in industrial organisation, antitrust policy and globalisation.

The widespread move towards more market-driven models of political economy combined with the expanding internationalisation of business and commerce has led to a series of proposals for global competition rules. To date these proposals have been hotly contested. A critical issue is whether some form of international rule-making is required, or whether soft law solutions are sufficient. Competition rules may be required to combat the damage done by global cartels and to diffuse the tensions created when more than one nation seeks to regulate the same conduct. Competition rules may also be required to protect the integrity of the world trading system. International rule-making, however, presents its own problems, not the least of which is a concern with protecting national sovereignty.

Since the failure of the Havana Charter in 1947 till the success of the combined efforts of leading antitrust authorities against mighty Microsoft, the antitrust regime has witnessed several ups and downs. Auf jeden Fall the journey was not an easy one. Moreover now antitrust regime is standing at international crossroads and is wondering about its future direction. Today, at this crucial juncture the antitrust world is confronted with several dilemmas simultaneously. Choices are to be made between national welfare or global welfare, national autonomy or global regulations, the efficiency factor or the fairness view, national champions or global champions, collective efficiency or collective inefficiency, WTO or ICN, the US model or the EU model and so on. It is widely believed among experts that to overcome these dilemmas, the world needs some truly unified international antitrust framework, which would enable the international community to achieve optimal product mix incorporating the best from all options and through such optimal product mix the global community can enjoy to a large extent advantages that competition policy has to offer. In this direction I have examined the feasibility and viability of unifying international competition policy in this work. Additionally, as the title suggests I have listed out advantages and disadvantages of such moves. Efforts for harmonization of competition laws began as early as in 1948. Till date there are several binding and non-binding arrangements made in the direction of harmonization. The WTO and the EU for effective coordination in antitrust area have launched recently new initiatives. International Competition Network, a forum for active interaction among antitrust officials, even though non-binding in nature is doing considerably good work. I believe such confidence building initiatives among nations would help in arriving at some amicable solutions, agreeable to all nations. Chapter 8 focuses on various such initiatives taken in the direction of harmonization. In the concluding chapter, I elaborate further on need of having a unified antitrust regime under a contemporary scenario. Recommendations and views of experts are also presented. At the end I discuss my views about feasibility of having a truly unified antitrust regime in foreseeable future and other possible alternative measures that might help in achieving harmonization in future.

. . . highly recommendable to anyone interested in international competition policy. Arndt Christiansen, European Competition Law Review This book provides a comprehensive and refreshing analysis of the competition issues raised by the globalisation of markets. It draws on a very wide range of economic and legal sources to assess the manifold proposals for controlling the competitive forces released by the freeing up of world markets. All those interested in these important and largely unresolved issues will find it an invaluable source of reference. Michael A. Utton, University of Reading, UK and Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, Dalian, China The globalization of market competition and business behaviour fosters globalization of cartels and monopolising mergers that can lead to abusive and predatory strategies. The globalization of competition therefore also demands an internationalization of competition policy. However, Oliver Budzinski is realistic in his assertion that supranational competition governance must be built upon the existing, predominantly national, regimes. The resulting multilevel system of antitrust institutions and authorities, he argues, is problematic for the horizontal and vertical allocation of competences. This book employs the economics of federalism to create an analytical framework which can be used for comparative analysis of stylised competence allocation rules. The result is a proposal for a sound international multilevel competition policy system that combines elements of both centralized and decentralized governance. This book provides an innovative and unique perspective on international competition policy and will be of interest to economists, legal scientists and competition authorities as well as academics and practitioners of international governance and international relations and politics.