News

CRA's Annual Conference takes place in Brussels

CRA's annual conference on "Economic Developments in European Competition Policy" got underway in Brussels on 8 December. The programme (see here) included seven Chief Economists from as many major agencies (DG Competition, the US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission, the UK Office of Fair Trading and Competition Commission, the French Autorité and the German Bundeskartellamt), as well as the Director General of DG Competition, the President of the Bundeskartellamt, the CEO of the OFT, and a number of distinguished academic economists. Nearly 400 senior competition lawyers, corporate executives, and government regulators attended from across Europe.

The conference was opened by a keynote speech by Alexander Italianer, the Director General of DG Competition, on "The Interplay of Law and Economics". This was followed by a session chaired by Cristina Caffarra on "Evolution in the assessment of horizontal mergers". DOJ and FTC Chief Economists Carl Shapiro and Joe Farrell explained the main developments in the new US Horizontal Merger Guidelines (adopted in August 2010), and in particular the role of "price pressure" tests as screen for merger effects. DG Competition's Chief Economist Damien Neven then discussed likely forthcoming changes in DG Competition's Notice on Market Definition and in the assessment of SIEC, while the OFT's Chief Economist Amelia Fletcher described developments in the UK following the adoption of new Horizontal Merger Guidelines by the OFT and the CC in September 2010.

CRA's academic associates Prof. Steven Salop (Georgetown University) and Prof. Kai-Uwe Kühn (University of Michigan) talked about the application of antitrust to IT and high-tech industries, in a session chaired by Bob Stillman.

The OFT's CEO John Fingleton then gave a talk about the interplay between competition enforcement and economic growth, with comments from Prof. John Van Reenen (London School of Economics) and Alison Oldale, Chief Economist of the UK Competition Commission.

The afternoon opened with an address from Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt, on developments in the analysis of buyer power and vertical arrangements in Germany. This was followed by a panel chaired by Alan Overd, on the role of vertical communications in cartels - with contributions from Thibaud Vergé, Chief Economist of the French Autorité de la Concurrence, Christian Ewald, Chief Economist of the Bundeskartellamt, Matthew Bennett (Director of Economics at the OFT) and Prof. Maarten Pieter Schinkel (University of Amsterdam).

The day was concluded with a session chaired by Giulio Federico, where Deputy Chief Economist of DG Competition Miguel de la Mano provided a view on the anticompetitive role of loyalty discounts and suggested a measure of consistency between the recent rulings by the European Courts and the Commission's Guidelines on exclusionary conduct. Two of the world's leading academic economists on foreclosure, Prof. Patrick Rey (Toulouse School of Economics) and Prof. Luis Cabral (IESE Business School and NYU Stern) discussed some of the underlying economics and the implications of the evolving European approach to exclusionary abuse.

The available presentations can be found here.

< Back to news archive

Print this page