Louvaris, Antoine --- "A Brief Overview of Some Conflicts between Economic Efficiency and Effectiveness of the Administrative or Judicial Process in Competition Law" [2009] ELECD 204; in Drexl, Josef; Idot, Laurence; Monéger, Joël (eds), "Economic Theory and Competition Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: Economic Theory and Competition Law

Editor(s): Drexl, Josef; Idot, Laurence; Monéger, Joël

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847206312

Section: Chapter 15

Section Title: A Brief Overview of Some Conflicts between Economic Efficiency and Effectiveness of the Administrative or Judicial Process in Competition Law

Author(s): Louvaris, Antoine

Number of pages: 18

Extract:

15. A brief overview of some conflicts
between economic efficiency and
effectiveness of the administrative
or judicial process in competition
law
Antoine Louvaris*

1 PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS

Economic efficiency is a complex notion and its crowning as the linchpin
of competition law is controversial. Nonetheless, it is possible to adopt a
simple, but sufficiently operational, approach to economic efficiency for
the purpose of this chapter. `In the context of industrial organization eco-
nomics and competition law and policy, it relates to the most effective
manner of utilizing scarce resources.'1 To suggest that competition law
aims at economic efficiency should logically imply, to put it bluntly, that
only practices that reduce the well-being of consumers should be forbid-
den, without prejudice to focal and absolute per se prohibitions as the
basis for condemning cartels, `the supreme evil of antitrust'.2 Positive
competition law is far from reaching this conclusion, supposing that it
should.
Undoubtedly, there is still an increasing propensity to promote economic
efficiency in the competition law of prominent jurisdictions, such as the EC,
at least since the Guidelines on Vertical Restraints3 and, later on, since the


* Professor of Public Law at the University of Paris Dauphine.
1 OECD, `Glossary of Industrial Organisation Economics and Competition

Law', http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/8/61/2376087.pdf (accessed 31 January 2008),
p 41.
2 Verizon Communications Inc v Law Offices of Curtis V Trinko LLP 540 US

398, 408 (2004).
3 See Commission Notice ­ Guidelines on vertical restraints, 13 October
...