Competition Law and Policy

As a society we strive to protect competition between businesses as a means of enhancing consumer welfare. We do so, since the rivalry between businesses and traders delivers lower prices, greater choice, increased innovation, and better quality of goods and services. Sometimes, society has to work hard to maintain the benefits that come with competition. While the competitive dynamics benefit consumers, it makes the life of producers, sellers and service providers rather difficult. If they fail to remain competitive, they may find themselves pushed out of the market. And so, at times, these firms may look for ways to dampen the competitive process by engaging in anticompetitive activities such as price-fixing, market sharing or abuse of dominance.

Our competition laws are designed to address these risks, remedy possible market failures, and safeguard consumer welfare. Competition agencies and courts are tasked with enforcing the law. As they do so, they face the challenge of correctly identifying the conduct that amounts to an anti-competitive activity and curtailing it to ensure dynamic and competitive markets.

The course will explore these competitive dynamics and the policy considerations that shape the level and scope of competition law enforcement. It will further focus on the European competition provisions and their practical application to anticompetitive agreements, abuse of dominance and merger control.

The lecture series is devoted to examining relevant statutory and case law frameworks, and the discussion of basic economic concepts. The tutorial series provides practical experience in the application of competition law through problem solving.