World Bank Technical Paper No. 385. MERCOSUR, the QUOTECommon Market of the Southern Cone,QUOTE was established to liberalize the movement of goods and services, eliminate customs duties, and coordinate macroeconomic and sectoral polices. Competition policy has been the subject of coordination at the MERCOSUR level. This paper provides an assessment of the legislative and enforcement effectiveness of the competition framework of the four MERCOSUR countries and gives specific recommendations for reform. MERCOSUR, formed in 1991 under the Treaty of Asuncion, currently consists of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay with Chile and Bolivia as associate members.

Cooperation, Comity, and Competition Policy, edited by Andrew T. Guzman, illustrates how domestic competition law policies intersect with the realities of international business. It offers a discussion of what might be done to improve the way in which cross-border business is handled by competition policy. The first part of the book provides country reports written by local experts explaining the extraterritorial reach of national laws. Each country report summarizes existing domestic law and examines the conditions under which each country applies its substantive competition laws to conduct that takes place abroad. These chapters also address the question of comity, meaning the circumstances in which a country would decline to exercise jurisdiction on the grounds that another state is the more appropriate jurisdiction. Finally, the extent of cooperation between the local government and other states is examined. In conducting cross-border business activity, these reports provide the reader with a sense of the multiple jurisdictions that a business must consider within the scope of how laws from various states interact and overlap. The countries covered include: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the EC, Israel, Japan, Singapore and the United States. The second part of the book offers several proposals for effectively managing these overlapping competition policy regimes. Written by top academics and practitioners, the proposals render some of the most important current thinking on the topic. The country reports and the expert policy proposals together provide a unique perspective on international competition policy and the challenges of the international competition policy regime.

Examines regional competition policy developments in South East Asia, exploring a broad range of related issues from diverse perspectives.

The Law of MERCOSUR presents both an overview and in-depth analysis of one of the world's most important and increasingly influential economic organisations. The book comprises both a series of first-hand analyses of MERCOSUR by experts from countries in the MERCOSUR bloc, and also discussions from other parts of the world looking at MERCOSUR as global actor of ever-increasing importance. The book is divided into three main parts: the first analyses the key institutional legal aspects of MERCOSUR, looking at its history, the general theory of economic integration, and basic aspects relating to the functioning of MERCOSUR; the second examines specialised topics, including the regulation of the environment, human rights and the energy market in MERCOSUR; and in the third part the editors offer a translation of core MERCOSUR instruments, with the objective of furthering understanding of the economic bloc. Original in its conception, the book aims to fill a major gap in the English-language literature by offering a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the Law of MERCOSUR, and it is hoped that it will become essential reading for those practitioners and academics who are interested not only in MERCOSUR, but in economic integration generally, in international trade, and in the regional aspects of the phenomenon of globalisation.

Derived from the renowned multi-volume International Encyclopaedia of Laws, this practical analysis of competition law and its interpretation in Argentina covers every aspect of the subject – the various forms of restrictive agreements and abuse of dominance prohibited by law and the rules on merger control; tests of illegality; filing obligations; administrative investigation and enforcement procedures; civil remedies and criminal penalties; and raising challenges to administrative decisions. Lawyers who handle transnational commercial transactions will appreciate the explanation of fundamental differences in procedure from one legal system to another, as well as the international aspects of competition law. Throughout the book, the treatment emphasizes enforcement, with relevant cases analysed where appropriate. An informative introductory chapter provides detailed information on the economic, legal, and historical background, including national and international sources, scope of application, an overview of substantive provisions and main notions, and a comprehensive description of the enforcement system including private enforcement. The book proceeds to a detailed analysis of substantive prohibitions, including cartels and other horizontal agreements, vertical restraints, the various types of abusive conduct by the dominant firms and the appraisal of concentrations, and then goes on to the administrative enforcement of competition law, with a focus on the antitrust authorities’ powers of investigation and the right of defence of suspected companies. This part also covers voluntary merger notifications and clearance decisions, as well as a description of the judicial review of administrative decisions. Its succinct yet scholarly nature, as well as the practical quality of the information it provides, make this book a valuable time-saving tool for business and legal professionals alike. Lawyers representing parties with interests in Argentina will welcome this very useful guide, and academics and researchers will appreciate its value in the study of international and comparative competition law.

While forces of globalization have created a genuine global marketplace, global rules safeguarding the competitive process in this marketplace have not emerged. International cooperation among national regulators and enforcers is therefore needed to create a competitive global business-environment. The Future of International Competition Law Enforcement, using the variety of legal instruments available to the EU as a point of departure, undertakes an original assessment of the EU's cooperation agreements in the field of competition law The work’s focus is on the bilateral sphere, often labelled as a mere 'interim-solution' awaiting a global agreement; further attention is given to competition provisions in free trade agreements as well as the main multilateral initiatives in this field, in order to determine their relative value.

Thanks to the strategy of `apertura' that has characterized economic policy throughout Latin America since the debt crisis, foreign investment is on the rise and a significant degree of economic stability has been achieved. In the global arena, however, the enormous promise of Latin American trade remains only partially realized, as policy makers in the region struggle to design a `fair' level playing field for encouraging sustained and equitable development, through implementing transparent regulatory business environments across the region. Competition policy has accordingly become a major regulatory issue in both individual Latin American countries and in regional cooperation arrangements. In considering the development of the "second generation" of regulatory policy initiatives implemented in the region, this important book analyzes the role of competition policy in the promotion of successful and sustained economic development. Examples of the vital and diverse aspects of the region's competition policy agenda covered are: comparative assessments of the legal regime of different Latin American countries for dealing with business restrictive practices, including cartels, vertical restraints, market foreclosures and mergers the increasing introduction of competition principles in the promotion of institutional reforms in the promotion of investments and technology, privatization processes, antidumping policy and trade remedies, and the regulation of public utilities the institutional factors influencing the relationship between competition authorities and other regulatory agencie The author combines the legal description of the jurisdictions reviewed with the analytical tools of institutional economics, to give a fully rounded picture of this complex and evolving subject.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book provides a distinctive and empirically rich account of the European Union’s relationship with the Common Market of the South (Mercosur). It seeks to examine the motivations that determine the EU’s policy towards Mercosur; the most important relationship the EU has with another regional economic integration organization. In order to investigate these motivations (or lack thereof), this study examines the contribution of the main policy- and decision-makers, the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, as well as the different contributions of the two institutions. It analyses the development of EU policy towards Mercosur in relation to three key stages. Arana argues that the dominant explanations in the literature fail to adequately explain the EU’s policy, in particular, these accounts tend to infer the EU’s motives from its activity. Rather than the EU pursuing a strategy, as implied by most of the existing literature, the EU was largely responsive, which explains why the relationship is much less developed than the EU’s relations with other parts of the world.