Monti, Giorgio --- "EC Competition Law: The Dominance of Economic Analysis?" [2010] ELECD 233; 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 1

Section Title: EC Competition Law: The Dominance of Economic Analysis?

Author(s): Monti, Giorgio

Number of pages: 26

Extract:

1. EC Competition Law: The
Dominance of Economic Analysis?
Giorgio Monti*

1 INTRODUCTION

Nobody can doubt that the most noticeable trend in EC competition law
since 1990 has been the increased use of economics by the EC Commission.
This is manifested at a range of levels: personnel in Directorate General
for Competition (DG Competition) (e.g. creation of the post of Chief
Economist, an increase in economists working in the DG); decisions
with increased economic sophistication;1 legal instruments designed by
reference to economic studies; and general policy ambitions (e.g. the lib-
eralisation drive that began in the early 1990s affecting utilities and other
sectors shielded by state legislation; the plan to reform Article 82 EC;
prosecutorial focus on hard-core cartels and away from less significant
vertical restraints). Even the Commission's sternest critic for many years,
Valentine Korah, has acknowledged that there has been an improvement in
this respect if one compares the concluding chapter in the Fifth and Ninth
editions of her well known `yellow book'.2 In the earlier edition she criti-
cised the paucity of economic analysis, while in the latest edition she notes
a dramatic improvement over the last decade, although identifying discrete
areas of concern. Thus, this chapter shall not call into question the fact that
there is more economic analysis in EC competition law today than there
was in the past, nor provide a detailed account of how economic analysis is
applied in all aspects of competition enforcement.3 Instead we ...