Heinemann, Andreas --- "The Impact of Innovation – Comments on Uwe Cantner and Wolfgang Kerber" [2011] ELECD 347; 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 10

Section Title: The Impact of Innovation – Comments on Uwe Cantner and Wolfgang Kerber

Author(s): Heinemann, Andreas

Number of pages: 13

Extract:

10. The impact of innovation ­
comments on Uwe Cantner and
Wolfgang Kerber
Andreas Heinemann

1. PRELIMINARY REMARKS

Evolutionary economics is a school of economic thinking which transfers
basic concepts of biology to socio-cultural phenomena. Keywords are
variation and selection: the competitive process is one of trial and error
in which different strategies compete with each other. Many new ideas are
tried and tested on markets. Markets decide on selection: only some of
these ideas are successful; others are sorted out. Nobody can tell before-
hand which ideas will survive. The evolutionary approach is genuinely
dynamic: the focus is on the economic development in time, and not so
much on the results in a given moment. Prominent precursors of the evo-
lutionary school are Schumpeter and Hayek. Schumpeter criticized the
ideal of perfect competition and underlined the role of entrepreneurs in the
process of creative destruction.1 Hayek explained the success of economic
strategies, routines and institutions as the result of a discovery procedure
and not of rational construction.
In our context, the contribution of evolutionary economics to competi-
tion law is to be scrutinized. Whereas Uwe Cantner describes the general
framework, Wolfgang Kerber makes specific policy proposals. In section 2
of these comments, the central subject will be discussed which is the impact
of evolutionary thinking on merger control. In section 3, the consequences
for Articles101 and 102 TFEU will be explored. Before drawing final con-
clusions, the consistency of evolutionary thinking with `interventionist'
competition policy has to be ...