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Vanberg, Viktor J. --- "Consumer Welfare, Total Welfare and Economic Freedom – On the Normative Foundations of Competition Policy" [2011] ELECD 339; in Drexl, Josef; Kerber, Wolfgang; Podszun, Rupprecht (eds), "Competition Policy and the Economic Approach" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Competition Policy and the Economic Approach

Editor(s): Drexl, Josef; Kerber, Wolfgang; Podszun, Rupprecht

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848448841

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: Consumer Welfare, Total Welfare and Economic Freedom – On the Normative Foundations of Competition Policy

Author(s): Vanberg, Viktor J.

Number of pages: 28

Extract:

2. Consumer welfare, total welfare
and economic freedom ­ on
the normative foundations of
competition policy
Viktor J. Vanberg

1. INTRODUCTION

The debate about the `more economic approach' and its role in the so-
called `modernization of European competition law'1 centers around two
principal issues. One issue concerns the normative foundations of com-
petition policy, the question of what should be considered as its proper
goal. The controversy here is essentially about whether competition policy
should seek to advance consumer welfare or total welfare, or ought to aim,
instead, at protecting `Wettbewerbsfreiheit' or the `freedom to compete',
a goal that has been notably stressed in the German ordo-liberal tradi-
tion. The other issue is about how economics as an empirical science can
help to improve the effectiveness of competition policy in achieving its
presumed goal. The controversy here is about whether competition policy
should adopt an `effects-based approach' that takes account of the specific
effects in each particular case as opposed to the conventional `form-based
approach' that works with general prohibitions of certain types or forms
of business practices (Schmidtchen 2007a: 96 et seq.).2
In the ongoing debate on the merits and demerits of the `modernization
of European competition law' the two issues are usually not explicitly
separated from each other, and they are, to be sure, interdependent. They
are, however, analytically distinct and the failure carefully to distinguish
between them is a major source of ambiguities in the arguments that have
been exchanged between critics ...