Gerber, David J. --- "The Goals of European Competition Law: Some Distortions in the Literature – Comment on Parret" [2012] ELECD 405; in Zimmer, Daniel (ed), "The Goals of Competition Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: The Goals of Competition Law

Editor(s): Zimmer, Daniel

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857936608

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: The Goals of European Competition Law: Some Distortions in the Literature – Comment on Parret

Author(s): Gerber, David J.

Number of pages: 10

Extract:

5. The goals of European competition
law: some distortions in the
literature ­ comment on Parret
David J Gerber

This comment highlights three issues that often cloud and sometimes
distort contemporary discussions of the goals of competition law, espe-
cially in Europe. Reading the chapter by Laura Parret highlighted these
issues for me. Her chapter at least recognizes some of the `black boxes'
in current thinking about the goals of European competition law, and it
is in that sense valuable. My discussion will treat the larger themes that
these discussions present and relate the chapter to them where appropri-
ate. My objective is to identify aspects of the literature that seem to me to
call for sharper analysis and to suggest ways of reducing or eliminating
their potentially distorting effects on current thinking about the goals of
European competition law.


1 THE TIME FACTOR: RELATING THE TEMPORAL
ELEMENTS

One prominent and fundamental issue involves the treatment of time. In
discussions of European competition law goals, time is often treated in
ways that interfere with effective discussion of the issues facing competi-
tion law today. Some commentators treat historical context as largely
irrelevant. Others treat it somewhat clumsily, either because they operate
with misconceptions of the past or because they fail to relate the past to the
present in ways that are useful to the current discussion.

1.1 Ignoring Time

In recent years, discussions of European competition law goals have
often paid little, if any, attention to the time factor. Those ...