Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Zimmer, Daniel --- "Competition Law de Lege Ferenda" [2010] ELECD 244; in Zäch, Roger; Heinemann, Andreas; Kellerhals, Andreas (eds), "The Development of Competition Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: The Development of Competition Law

Editor(s): Zäch, Roger; Heinemann, Andreas; Kellerhals, Andreas

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848444461

Section: Chapter 12

Section Title: Competition Law de Lege Ferenda

Author(s): Zimmer, Daniel

Number of pages: 12

Extract:

12. Competition law de lege ferenda
Daniel Zimmer*

In this chapter, I will deal ­ in brief ­ with four questions:

1 Where do we stand?
2 Where should we be going?
3 What is the role of economics in competition policy?
4 What has to be done right now?


1 WHERE DO WE STAND? AN ATTEMPT TO DRAW
A CONCLUSION

The chapters presented in this book provide an excellent overview of
the development of competition policy and law in the past two decades.
Looking at them all together, we may draw some conclusions.
The competition principle spreads across the world. From the United
States of America, where the legislation against restraints of trade was
initiated with the Sherman Act in 1890, the principles of competition law
have been brought to Japan and Germany in the late 1940s ­ certainly not
only for the sake of a free and competitive economy, but ­ in the begin-
ning ­ also in order to disempower existing economic structures.1 The
European Economic Community, which formed its competition rules in
the 1950s, had ­ with the creation of a common market and the economic
advantages of it ­ already other objectives.2 The Brazilian legislation dates
from the same period. India and other important economies followed


* Professor of Law, University of Bonn, Institute for Commercial Law, Bonn,
Germany.
1 See for the Japanese Law Hayashi, S. (2008), `The goals of Japanese com-

petition law' in J. Drexl, L. Idot and J. Monéger (eds) Economic Theory and
Competition Law, 68; ...