Martin, Stephen --- "Globalization and the Natural Limits of Competition" [2004] ELECD 177; in Neumann, Manfred; Weigand, Jürgen (eds), "The International Handbook of Competition" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2004)

Book Title: The International Handbook of Competition

Editor(s): Neumann, Manfred; Weigand, Jürgen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781843760542

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: Globalization and the Natural Limits of Competition

Author(s): Martin, Stephen

Number of pages: 49

Extract:

1 Globalization and the natural limits of
competition
Stephen Martin*



1 Introduction
The debate on competition and its limits, which has its roots at the very
foundation of economics as a discipline, has a phoenix-like quality. It
periodically flares up, burns itself out and rises again, but largely without
memory, unconscious of its previous incarnations. Certain themes appear
and reappear: competition in the sense of structure, or of conduct, or of
performance; potential distinguished from actual competition; advertising as
a source of information or a means of persuasion; antitrust or competition
policy seen as the heavy hand of government regulation or as the last best
alternative to the heavy hand of government regulation, but each iteration
seems to begin more or less anew, with different parties staking out positions
that to them seem new but in fact are new only to them.
The issues raised by globalization at the dawn of the 21st century were
also raised, on a smaller but still ample stage, by the forging of a continent-
wide economy in the United States in the generation after the US Civil
War. Contrasting positions on those issues were laid out in a debate on
competition and its limits that preceded passage of the Sherman Act of
1890. Those positions appeared again in policy debates in the run-up to
the 1914 passage of the Clayton Act and the Federal Trade Commission
Act. They appeared yet again in US debates about the depression-era
National Industrial Recovery Act ...