The purpose of this thesis is to investigate into the phenomenon of over-reliance on external credit ratings by investors and market participants. This phenomenon is traced back to the hardwiring of the credit ratings into legislation. In this context, the investigation has a broad scope in that it is not only concerned with the phenomenon per se, but also with the current status of implementation of the rules which have been set out to tackle this problem. The approaches against over-reliance have been elaborated at the international level by the Financial Stability Board (FSB). These were incorporated into specific rules at the EU and US levels. This thesis will therefore analyse and critically assess the progress which these two legal systems have made for translating into practice the international standards against over-reliance on external credit ratings. This subject is of relevant interest from several perspectives. Firstly, the phenomenon was brought to attention in the aftermath of the recent financial turmoil. This is a new context, which is to be regarded as a segment of the post-crisis reforms on the structure and operation of the rating industry. This part of the reforms stimulates to provide an understanding of the nature of overreliance on the credit ratings and why investors and market participants are vulnerable to it. Secondly, the phenomenon made regulators cast numerous doubts in respect of the opportunity of relying on the credit ratings in legislation. This aspect stimulates research with regard to the use of the credit ratings by the private and public sector and to investigate the degree to which the tie between the regulators and the credit ratings have changed because of the threat of over-reliance. Thirdly, normative approaches have been set out and the implementation process is still ongoing at the time of writing. A critical evaluation of them permits an assessment of the current status of progress in the translation of the approaches, to identify their positive and negative aspects, and discuss possible improvements. Fourthly, the analysis of the progress and its outcomes may stimulate further reflections on the premise the debate on over-reliance was based upon. This permits us to wonder which (if any) things might have been missed at the beginning, whether the debate is to be considered closed or whether there are new, possible, directions to be taken in the future. Overall, this research will provide a thorough investigation into the problem of over-reliance from the post-crisis regulatory debate on the CRAs until the issue and implementation of specific rules aiming at mitigating this risk. In particular, by explaining the phenomenon of over-reliance on external credit ratings, critically reviewing the advantages and shortcomings of the approaches against it, and suggesting possible improvements, this research may be the platform for further studies on a subject which has so far received marginal attention by the literature on the CRAs.

This thesis is concerned with the problems met by the administrative enforcers of the Antimonopoly Law (the AML 2007) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) during its public enforcement. It provides solutions to some of these problems with reference to EU competition law and US antitrust law. Although the thesis cannot solve all the problems once for all, it does provide effective solutions to the three following important issues: 1. how to establish and improve transparency of Chinese merger control procedure; 2. how to allocate public enforcement power of the AML 2007 between the Central and Provincial enforcers; and, 3. how to improve the protection of right of concerned parties during the AML 2007’s public enforcement. Chinese Antimonopoly Law’s public enforcement is still immature and experiencing further challenges for development. In order to establish a more effective, transparent and fair public enforcement regime, the thesis chooses EU competition law and US antitrust law to compare. Not only because they are more advanced, but also, because the AML 2007 is heavily influenced by the two regimes (especially the EU competition law regime). However, it is noteworthy that the experience from EU and US cannot solve all problems met by Chinese administrative enforcers; especially those are caused by Chinese political and economic structure which both EU and US do/did not have. Nevertheless, by solving the problems met in the above three aspects, the thesis has contributed to a more effective, transparent and fair public enforcement procedure for Chinese Antimonopoly Law. Translations of titles, authors, and publishers from Chinese works are unofficial, and the laws in this thesis are up to date at December 2012.

The Chinese Anti-monopoly Law (AML) entered into force on August 1, 2008 and abuse of administrative power to eliminate or restrict competition is prohibited and dealt in Chapter Five of this law. Abuse of administrative power is one of the most significant ways to eliminate or restrict competition in China. Great concerns had been focused on the rules of abuse of administrative power before the AML was promulgated. However, its progress in practice is slow and experiences difficulties after this law took effect. Little research has been undertaken outside of China on abuse of administrative power to eliminate or restrict competition due to the specific background and situation pertaining in China. Concerning to abuse of administrative power, the AML have close relationships with EU competition law and free movement rules. This thesis aims to provide a critical comparison between the AML, Article 106 TFEU of EU competition law and free movement rules, and draws on the EU’s experience as a source of criticism and guidance in relation to the application of abuse of administrative power to eliminate or restrict competition in the AML. This study first provides a background introduction on the development of the AML and abuse of administrative power to eliminate or restrict competition and analyses the complicated causes of abuse of administrative power in competition through three areas: the history of China’s economic system, economic theory and legislation. The main comparative and critical research are held in Chapters Four and Five which examine the relationships between abuse of administrative power in the AML, Article 106 TFEU and EU free movement rules respectively. In Chapter Six a case study is taken in telecommunications sector. The application of abuse of administrative power provisions of the AML in telecommunications sector is examined through three areas: market access, interconnection and universal services. This thesis concludes by noting that (1) abuse of administrative power to eliminate or restrict competition provisions in the AML should be revised on the content of these provisions and their exemption rules; (2) a dual-structure of controlling abuse of administrative power based on monopolistic conduct and free circulation is held in the AML; (3) the inapplicability of abuse of administrative power provisions in these telecommunications issues requires a revise for abuse of administrative power in the AML.

This thesis conducts a robust and granular examination of the concept of ‘object’ under Article 101(1) TFEU and its resulting legal and practical implications. To that end, a methodology focusing on the case law of the European Courts and other primary sources is adopted. This enables a legal analysis of the meaning, application and role of restrictions of competition by object to be undertaken. The case law reveals three key approaches adopted by the European Courts to restrictions by object: the ‘orthodox approach’, the ‘more analytical approach’ and an amalgamation of these two approaches, the ‘hybrid approach’. This finding immediately questions the dominance of the orthodox approach within legal discourse over the years. The orthodox approach contends that a limited category of agreements are considered by law to automatically restrict competition by virtue of their object. This is reflected in the European Commission’s Article 81(3) Guidelines and is encapsulated by the widely recognised ‘object box’. This thesis poses a direct challenge to such narrow interpretation of the law. It argues that this depiction of the law does not fully reflect the jurisprudence of the European Courts. Rather the case law reveals an alternative interpretation of the concept of object based on the seminal case of Société Technique Minière concerned more with determining the aim of the agreement within its legal and economic context as opposed to its categorisation. Moreover, the ‘more analytical approach’ benefits from greater judicial support. Having established the three key approaches and their application under Article 101(1) TFEU, the question of what is the best interpretation of the law on restrictions of competition by ‘object’ is reflected on. Based on the case law of the European Courts, it is argued the more analytical approach provides the best interpretation of the law. This is assessed in relation to the framework of Article 101 TFEU as a whole. Finally, this thesis briefly explores whether such conclusion is then consistent with the optimum function of the object criterion from an enforcement perspective.

This research investigates the theoretical foundations of EU competition tying law. While tying prohibitions have existed in the EEC Treaty since 1957 the theoretical foundations of tying are not well understood. This thesis provides crucial insight into the theory and theoretical validity of tying law. This thesis focuses on answering three questions in relation to tying: One, what was the original economic theory underlying the prohibition on tying? Two, how has this changed and on what economic principles is tying law currently based? Three, are these principles appropriately aligned with the current state of economic thinking? In order to answer these three questions this thesis considers three leading schools of thought in competition law (Ordoliberalism, the Chicago School of antitrust analysis and post-Chicago antitrust analysis) before analysing the jurisprudence of the EU Commission and courts and establishing which theory forms the foundation of EU tying law. This research makes an interdisciplinary contribution through the use of both legal-historical analysis and legal-economic analysis. This yields important results on the historical development of tying law in Europe and also provides an economic analysis of the validity of EU law, assessing whether the aims of the law are economically valid and effectively applied. Where there are failures in the application of the law, normative proposals are given in order to demonstrate how the law and its application can be improved. The result of this analysis is to establish two distinct periods of theoretical influence (the author calls these the mono- and di-theoretical periods). A novel analysis of the tying decisions made in the software market is also presented and a new theory of foreclosure proposed that explains the decisions made in that market.

When talking about the importance of the agri-food production environment and the application of food safety and sanitary measures in it, a list of growing unfortunate related events come to mind such as: the rise of diseases coming from farming production, the rocketing of environmental degradation and overexploitation of genetic farmed pools, the economically important agri-food scares and overall, the opacity of agri-food production and regulation. This thesis examines the divergence between legal measures and legal application of global agri-food standards as a legitimacy crisis and has a twofold aim. First it aims to illustrate the role that regulatory legitimacy plays in effective compliance by studying the construction of regulatory legitimacy as a discursive practice. Second, and as a result of this the thesis asks how South Indian animal farming systems and international safety and sanitary measures construct their environmental normative legitimacy and introduce some implications for the animal farming/public health international debate. In this social constructivist approach, the thesis applies a combination of environmental discourse and framing analysis –discursive framings- to empirically study the construction of (non) formally binding norms in agri-food environments. These ´discursive framings´ it is argued, help represent the architectures of green compliance embedded in agro-environmental narratives, uncovered through the uses of language. In this way, framings help detect a variety of forms of (non) endorsement of safety and sanitary measures by regulatory stakeholders and with it, their role in ´racing standards to the top or to the bottom´ in agri-food regulation. An exploratory study comparing documents about safety and sanitary measures (believed to reinforce levels of safety and sanitary compliance in trade conflicts) in international dispute resolutions and interviews of key stakeholders in the field (believed to reflect safety and sanitary compliance in animal farming practice) in South India are conducted. The comparison of expected compliance between dispute formal documents and transcripts of actors under potential regulation provides insight into the discursive constitutions of legal and social safety and sanitary standards. It also informs on a number of counterproductive effects (cooptation, substitution or dilution of regulatory measures) when poor translation of normative preferences from global sanitary provisions of market access into the subnational agri-food environment begins to take place. The thesis empirically demonstrates how present public understandings of WTO-SPS Agreements in India have the potential to induce existent food safety and sanitary compliance into a race to the bottom increasing diseases from farmed animals in this country: given the consistent constellation of discursive voids that have left scientific knowledge out of agro-ecological and animal health present concerns, subnationally and internationally. The conceptual framework, the primary and secondary data and the analyses account for this complexity, namely, the convergences and voids left among discursive constellations of green compliance and their roles in existing models of agri-food regulation. Finally, the thesis presents the contributions to the study of Dryzek´s environmental discourses that a constructivist research like this can make to the study of legitimacy crises and efficacious regulation in general and between international market access, public health and the ago-environment in India (the case studied here) in particular.

This thesis is aimed at solving this puzzle: If the rules are the same, how do regulatory authorities compete for business firms to come to their jurisdictions? I suggest that it is better to think of regulatory competition in terms of regulating and regulated sides finding a partner to form a marriage. I argue that an important dimension to regulatory competition is competition between different types of microlevel enforcement regimes for different types of firms. Assuming the rules stay the same, depending on the match or mismatch of regimes’ and firms’ preferences, enforcement regimes have differential results in business attraction, enforcement effect and regulatory advantage. This argument is elucidated by a so-called ER (enforcement regime) Framework that uses the cultural institutionalist approach – a fusion of historical institutionalism and Mary Douglas’ grid-group typology. The framework is used to interpret the empirical findings about regulatory competition for foreign investment in China. The thesis adds to our knowledge about the dynamics both of regulatory competition and of enforcement regimes, and helps to fill the gap that exists between the literatures in these two areas.

The failure of the trade negotiations at Seattle, and the collapse of the negotiations at Doha have bought increased attention to the issue of development, aid, and the implementation of special and differential rights in favour of developing countries. This thesis looks to examine one aspect of the many issues facing developed and developing countries in the negotiations that lie ahead, specifically how international economic law can be used in the application of technological processes to help address the Digital Divide. At present, there is an emphasis on development and the needs of developing countries, and that such development needs to be sustainable. Research reviewed in Chapter 2 indicates that growing information technology levels leads to growth of GDP. Importantly the use of ICT‘s will foster growth in the trade of electronic goods and services (electronic intangibles). By making positive attempts to reduce the Digital Divide, DCs and LDCs will be in a better position to access the necessary ICTs required to help grow GDP and facilitate sustainable development. The thesis sets out various measures to help reduce the digital divide and founded in international economic law. Central to the thesis is a new Layering Theory that the Author argues will assist operators (both incumbents and Independent Service Providers) in the developing world to gain access to international backbone Internet networks at cost price, one of the main impediments to reducing the international digital divide. The Layering Theory sets out a procedure for accurately identifying the relevant market for providers of Next Generation Networks (NGNs) and services so that those operators who abuse their dominance by refusing to supply an interconnection service or access to a digital network can be compelled to interconnect their networks to those smaller domestic or third country Internet Service Providers (ISP) operators who require access. By gaining access/interconnection in this way, operators in DCs and LDCs will be in a much better position to take advantage of cheaper production costs to export electronic intangibles overseas. Also, the thesis sets out recommendations for reform of international telecommunications, new provisions on technology transfer to help DCs and LDCs access the ICTs needed to address the Digital Divide, including provisions on technology transfer found in the increasing take-up of bilateral and regional trade agreements—and if there is to be free trade in e-commerce—recommendations for reform of current WTO rules on the classification of electronic goods and services. However, the thesis also argues that the digital divide cannot be addressed without strengthening the human capital base in developing and least developed countries, and that this cannot happen without such states also giving greater effect to the enforcement of civil and political, and economic, social and cultural rights ―at home‖. The thesis asks whether it is possible to define a relationship in IEL between civil and political, and economic social and cultural rights as a collective for example in the form of the much debated and somewhat controversial Right to Development (the ―RTD‖ as defined in this thesis) on the one hand, with economic indicators, such Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on the other? And if so, how the RTD can be operationalised.

Issuing soft law instruments on the enforcement of abuse of a dominant position in different competition law systems has never been a global trend in the last decade than before. In the European Union (EU), the European Commission published the “Guidance on the Commission's Enforcement Priorities in Applying Article 82 of the EC Treaty to Abusive Exclusionary Conduct by Dominant Undertakings” (the Guidance) in February 2009 as yet the final formal stage during the “modernisation” of Art.102 TFEU. As an official candidate for EU membership, Turkey is unlikely to distance itself from the developments in the EU. Within this context, “Guidelines on the Assessment of Abusive Exclusionary Conduct by Dominant Undertakings” (the Guidelines on Art.6) were published on April 7, 2014. Evident from their structure and substantive content, the Guidelines on Art.6 are closely modelled on the Guidance. Although the transposition of the Guidance into Turkish competition law seems prima facie desirable in terms of the harmonisation of Turkey's domestic competition law with the EU acquis, the question as to whether the Guidelines on Art.6 have suited to Turkey's own needs gains significance. Despite being the first secondary legislation on Art.6 of the Act on the Protection of Competition 1994 in Turkey, a lack of much-needed guidance on the problematic areas in the enforcement of Art.6 may well result in the Guidelines on Art.6 being a missed opportunity to establish a coherent policy on Art.6. This thesis explores whether there is a need for adopting Guidelines in relation to Art.6 in Turkish competition law, examines whether the Guidance can or should be used as a model, and finally gives reflections on how the legal regime and content of these Guidelines can be best tailored to the enforcement of Art.6 in Turkey.

The thesis seeks to examine the competitiveness of the methods by which beer has been distributed in the UK, particularly the beer tying agreement, with the objective of setting out recommendations for the future. In order to fulfil this objective, the thesis aims firstly to engage in a scholarly exercise of clarifying the role and purpose of the beer tie; the application of the EU competition law provisions to the brewing industry; and the UK Government’s approach to regulating it. Secondly, the thesis engages in comparative research and will consider how other non-UK markets have dealt with the distribution of beer, and more specifically the issue of the beer tie. In doing so, the thesis seeks to ascertain how competitive the UK market is in the context of these other geographical markets. The thesis will also compare the UK beer market with another UK market in which the use of tying agreements is prevalent in order to ascertain whether the same issues have been faced in this market as in the beer market. The intention of the comparative research in the thesis is to provide assistance to legal policy makers on the future regulation of beer distribution in the UK. The thesis does not however undertake to propose measures to achieve a state of perfect competition. Rather, it undertakes, as the third aim of the thesis, to propose informed recommendations that address better the ongoing anti-competitive concerns associated with the operation of the beer tie today and ensure a socially acceptable level of workable competition.