Excessive Pricing and Competition Law Enforcement

This volume examines the controversy surrounding the use of competition law to combat excessive pricing. While high or monopolistic pricing is not regarded as an antitrust violation in the US, employing abuse of dominance provisions in competition laws to fight excessive pricing has gained popularity in some BRICS jurisdictions and a number of EU-member states in recent years. The book begins by discussing the economic arguments for and against the prohibition of excessive or unfair prices by firms with market power. It then presents various country studies, focusing on developed countries (such as the UK and Israel) and on the BRICS countries, to highlight various practical challenges involved in recognizing excessive prices as abusive conduct on the part of dominant firms, including how to define, measure and identify excessive prices. The contributors also discuss other policy options that can be used to fight excessive prices in order to protect consumer welfare.

This volume examines the controversy surrounding the use of competition law to combat excessive pricing. While high or monopolistic pricing is not regarded as an antitrust violation in the US, employing abuse of dominance provisions in competition laws to fight excessive pricing has gained popularity in some BRICS jurisdictions and a number of EU-member states in recent years. The book begins by discussing the economic arguments for and against the prohibition of excessive or unfair prices by firms with market power. It then presents various country studies, focusing on developed countries (such as the UK and Israel) and on the BRICS countries, to highlight various practical challenges involved in recognizing excessive prices as abusive conduct on the part of dominant firms, including how to define, measure and identify excessive prices. The contributors also discuss other policy options that can be used to fight excessive prices in order to protect consumer welfare.

Introduction (Frederic Jenny and Yannis Katsoulacos).- Abuse of Dominance by Firms Charging Excessive or Unfair Prices: An Assessment (Frederic Jenny).- Another Look at the Economics of the UK CMA's Phenytoin Case (John Davies and Jorge Padilla).- A Coherent Approach to the Antitrust Prohibition of Excessive Pricing by Dominant Firms (David Gilo).- Antitrust Enforcement of the Prohibition of Excessive Prices: The Israeli Experience (Yossi Spiegel).- Working Out the Standards for Excessive Pricing in South Africa (Liberty Mncube and Mfundo Ngobese).- The Brazilian Experience with Excessive Pricing Cases: Hello, Goodbye (E. P. Ribeiro and C. Mattos).-Enforcement against Excessive Pricing in the Russian Federation (Svetlana Avdasheva and Dina Korneeva).- Anti-Monopoly Cases on Unfair Pricing in China (Xiao Fu and Heng Ju).- Excessiveness of Prices as an Abuse of Dominant Position: The Case of India (Augustine Peter and Neha Singh).