This book is only available in PDF format 
Published: 15 September, 2004
Pages: 65

Introduction

The purpose of this seminar is to discuss common competition law issues from an economic perspective. We believe that such an analysis helps lawyers tackle competition law problems by bringing the most important issues to the surface.

Instead of focusing on the statutory language of the Commerce Act 1986 (“the Act”), our goal is to present an economic framework for understanding the behaviour in question and whether or not it is harmful. Our claim is not that economic reasoning is a substitute for a careful legal analysis (although the language of the Act contains many economic concepts) or that economists are less likely to disagree than lawyers over hard cases. Rather, we believe that the economic point of view provides a bridging set of concepts and categories for interpreting and discussing complex commercial behaviour. It provides a level of analysis between the raw facts and their legal consequences. Being able to work with these concepts helps a lawyer both conduct a factual inquiry and apply the language of the Act to those facts.

This seminar book is divided into the following three parts:

1. Economics of markets and competition
2. Overview of the Commerce Act
3. Common issues in competition law: an economic approach

Authors

Author(s): James Mellsop, James Palmer