Submitted by Stefania Grezzana Merenstein (stegrez@hotmail.com) on 2016-06-01T19:29:20Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Stefania Grezzana - Tese_vBiblio.pdf: 2120928 bytes, checksum: 746cbcd0ea0f6d71185c9ae0b5f8dc1c (MD5) / Rejected by Letícia Monteiro de Souza (leticia.dsouza@fgv.br), reason: Prezada Stefania, Favor alterar seu trabalho de acordo com as normas ABNT: 1: Contra-capa: O texto padrão de introdução deve ser em português. 2: Folha de assinatura: O texto deve, também, ser em português. 3: Agradecimentos e Acknoledgments: Favor fazer uma sessão de Agradecimentos em português e posicionar antes da folha de Acknoledgments. 4: Os títulos das sessões devem estar em caixa alta, negritado e centralizado. 5: A contagem de página deve apenas aparecer da Introdução a diante, e a mesma deve estar localizado ao lado direito da folha. Atenciosamente, Letícia Monteiro 3799-3631 on 2016-06-01T19:36:24Z (GMT) / Submitted by Stefania Grezzana Merenstein (stegrez@hotmail.com) on 2016-06-02T11:45:34Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Stefania Grezzana - Tese_vBiblio.pdf: 2125635 bytes, checksum: 80fe18aa661329f13965b2322ec441b2 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzinei Teles Garcia Garcia (suzinei.garcia@fgv.br) on 2016-06-02T12:18:44Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Stefania Grezzana - Tese_vBiblio.pdf: 2125635 bytes, checksum: 80fe18aa661329f13965b2322ec441b2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T12:28:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Stefania Grezzana - Tese_vBiblio.pdf: 2125635 bytes, checksum: 80fe18aa661329f13965b2322ec441b2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-05-13 / This dissertation is a conjunction of three essays on the Industrial Organization field, this empirical work is applied to the Brazilian retail gasoline market. The first essay investigates the existence of spillover effects from cartel activity. The second essay relates the well-known economic puzzle of asymmetric cost pass through to prices with the existence of horizontal coordination - cartels - in the relevant market. Finally, the third essay investigates the effectiveness of antitrust interventions inside the offenders and the consequences of its disclosure in related markets. / Esta tese é uma conjunção de três ensaios sobre no campo de organização industrial, o trabalho empírico é aplicado ao mercado brasileiro de revenda de combustíveis, especificamente gasolina. O primeiro ensaio investiga a existência de efeitos indiretos, repercussões para outros mercados, resultantes da atividade do cartel. O segundo ensaio relaciona o conhecido tema da literatura de repasse assimétrico de custos aos preços com a existência de coordenação horizontal - cartéis - nos mercados em questão. Finalmente, o terceiro ensaio investiga a eficácia das intervenções de defesa da concorrência dentre os infractores e as consequências da sua divulgação em mercados relacionados.

Submitted by Morgana Silva (morgana_linhares@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-07-04T19:36:04Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1182622 bytes, checksum: 2e5942b467ad9f97326d7ce6284d69d6 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-04T19:36:04Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1182622 bytes, checksum: 2e5942b467ad9f97326d7ce6284d69d6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-04-20 / This paper aims to shed some light on the applicability of leniency agreement in the Brazilian System of Competition Defense. For this, it’s necessary a rescue on the development of the idea of freedom, and then get to free competition as principle underlying the Economic Order. The democratic state, established in the 1988 Constitution, is the contemporary stage of defense of legal, economic and social values which are intended to guarantee national development, and promote the construction of a free, fair and inclusive society. It will be seen that the mentioned Economic Policy correlates with the Criminal Policy idealized by the State. There will be a theoretical and historical establishment that takes account of the evolution of the discipline of Antitrust in Brazil. There will also find space in this paper for the illustration of the idea of Antitrust Sanctioning Law to see how the Government may, very effectively, investigate and punish officials based on their own standards, serving as a counterpoint to the Economic Criminal Law. This route of parallel paths between administrative and legal marks of Antitrust is clearly reflected in the Leniency Agreement institute. Thus, a conceptual frame about what will be the object spanned by the leniency agreement will be presented: cartels. Will fetch up the demonstration of various types of cartel, with special emphasis on bidding cartels. Finally, the work dissects the institute's Leniency Agreement itself, solidifying its legislative and conceptual basis, and presenting their rules. Through the combination of legal rules, will be shown the way to be observed when entering into an agreement. Based on this view, will be presented the Historical of Conducts of a Leniency Agreement in a bidding cartel. Also adds up the context of the Leniency Agreement in international models implemented in the United States and European Union. In addition, this paper will seek to give lights to the criteria for distinguishing between administrative predictions arising from decisions made by administrative courts, especially the Administrative Council for Economic Defense, and its possible implementation in criminal area, suggesting alternatives that may match in an harmonic way the application of the institute and the preservation of its effects. / O presente trabalho tem por objetivo lançar algumas luzes acerca da aplicabilidade do Acordo de Leniência no Sistema Brasileiro de Defesa da Concorrência. Para isso, vislumbrou-se como necessário um resgate acerca do desenvolvimento da ideia de liberdade, para então se chegar à livre concorrência como princípio inspirador da ordem econômica. O Estado Democrático de Direito, estabelecido na Carta de 1988, representa o estágio contemporâneo de defesa de valores jurídicos, econômicos e sociais que têm por finalidade garantir o desenvolvimento nacional, além de promover a construção de uma sociedade livre, justa e solidária. Será visto que a mencionada Política Econômica encontra correlação com a Política Criminal idealizada pelo Estado. Será feito um apurado teórico-histórico que dê conta da evolução do disciplinamento do Antitruste no Brasil. Também encontrará espaço no presente trabalho a ilustração da ideia de Direito Antitruste Sancionador, a fim de que se possa perceber como a Administração Pública pode, muito eficazmente, investigar e punir agentes com base em suas próprias normas, servindo de contraponto ao Direito Penal Econômico. Essa via de caminhos paralelos entre administrativização e judicialização do Antitruste encontra reflexo claro no instituto do Acordo de Leniência. Para tanto, será apresentado um panorama conceitual acerca do que venha a ser o objeto de combate abarcado pelo Acordo de Leniência: os cartéis. Buscar-se-á a demonstração dos diversos tipos de cartel, dando especial relevo aos cartéis em licitação. Por fim, o trabalho esmiúça o instituto do Acordo de Leniência em si, firmando sua base legislativa, conceitual e apresentando suas regras de procedibilidade. Por meio da combinação de disciplinamentos legais, será demonstrado o caminho a ser observado quando da celebração de um Acordo. A partir dessa visão, será feita a demonstração do Histórico de Condutas do Acordo de Leniência num cartel em licitação. Acrescenta-se também a contextualização dos modelos internacionais de Acordo de Leniência implementados nos Estados Unidos e União Europeia. Além disso, buscar-se-á dar relevo aos critérios de distinção existentes entre as previsões administrativas oriundas das decisões proferidas pelos órgãos da administração, especialmente o Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica e a sua possível implementação na seara penal, sugerindo alternativas que possam compatibilizar de forma harmônica a aplicação do instituto e a preservação dos seus efeitos.

O problema que o presente estudo visa a esmiuçar é se a aplicação das normas de defesa da concorrência deve ou não ser flexibilizada em tempos de crises econômicas e financeiras. Mais especificamente, propõe-se a investigar se, durante crises, as autoridades concorrenciais devem ou não adotar uma abordagem mais leniente com relação aos princípios tradicionais e fundamentais do antitruste, (i) aprovando concentrações excessivas a partir de uma aplicação leniente da Failing Firm Defense, e/ou (ii) permitindo a coordenação de agentes econômicos mediante a formação de acordos colusivos sob os argumentos dos cartéis de crise. O Capítulo 1 apresenta uma breve descrição acerca da evolução do Direito Concorrencial nos Estados Unidos, União Europeia e Brasil, de forma a se verificar que a política antitruste é influenciada pelas condições econômicas vigentes em cada país. Ademais, tal discussão serve para contextualizar a análise conduzida ao longo do trabalho. Posteriormente, fez-se imprescindível entender o que são as crises econômicas e financeiras, buscando-se definições doutrinárias e mostrar que tais fenômenos ocorrem frequentemente no capitalismo. Finaliza-se tal capítulo com uma sucinta análise de duas das principais crises da história do capitalismo moderno, é saber, a Crise de 1929 e a recente crise do sub-prime. Já o Capítulo 3 trata efetivamente da relação entre o Direito Concorrencial e as crises econômicas e financeiras, tendo-se analisado a suspensão do antitruste nos Estados Unidos após a Crise de 1929, e investigado, por meio da análise de doutrina, legislação e jurisprudência estrangeiras, a necessidade ou não de se suavizar a aplicação das normas de defesa da concorrência em tempos de crise econômica, tanto no que diz respeito ao controle de estruturas, como ao controle de condutas. O Capítulo 4 destina-se a tratar da realidade brasileira, verificando, diante dos resultados encontrados ao longo do estudo, bem como das particularidades do ordenamento jurídico pátrio e da jurisprudência dos órgãos de defesa da concorrência, em que medida os resultados encontrados se aplicam no Brasil. Por fim, apresentam-se as conclusões. / The purpose of this dissertation is to assess whether antitrust enforcement should be mitigated in times of economic and financial crisis. Specifically, it is investigated if, during crisis, competition authorities should adopt a more lenient approach regarding the traditional and fundamental principles of Antitrust Law by (i) approving problematic mergers by softening the Failing Firm Defense criteria, and/or (ii) allowing competitors to coordinate their activities through collusive agreements under the arguments of crisis cartels. Chapter 1 provides a brief description about the development of Competition Law in the United States, European Union and Brazil. The purpose of such analysis is to verify that antitrust policy is influenced by the economic conditions in force in each country. Besides, the discussion is useful to contextualize further analysis carried out throughout the dissertation. After that, it was indispensable to understand what are economic and financial crisis and to show that such situations occur frequently in a capitalist economy. This chapter is concluded with a brief analysis of two of the main crisis in the history of modern capitalism: the Crash of 1929 and the recent subprime crisis. Chapter 3 address the relationship between Antitrust Law and economic and financial crisis. Firstly, the American experience of suspending Competition Law after the 1929 Crash was analyzed. Additionally, the dissertation reviewed theoretical arguments and foreign laws and case law in order to assess whether antitrust (merger control and fight against anticompetitive practices) should be mitigated in times of economic and financial crisis. Chapter 4 deals with the Brazilian reality, assessing if the results found throughout the dissertation are applicable, considering the peculiarities of the national legislation and the case law of the Brazilian antitrust authorities. At the end, the conclusions are presented.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:34:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Rafael Rocha de Macedo.pdf: 1099098 bytes, checksum: 5c49fcbd1f6ffad189d986898b95967b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-05-29 / The present work aims to analyse the antitrust law, pointing it as an instrument for public policies implementation to economic development. The association between atitrust law and economic development, instrument and posible effect, is based on the antitrust multiple function, which performs it both as public policy and systemic maintaining. Also, it takes into account the relevant impacts of competition in the most diverse spheres of social and economic life, as full employment, consumer relations, and especially in development. To achieve the intent, were analyzed as the traditional conceptions of antitrust law applied to economic power and regulation, in approach that also includes the study of the concept of power, economic, and antitrust law in Brazil. The development issue, was analyzed under conceptual and historical aspects. The work also nalyses have the antitrust law as a tool for implementation of public policies for economic development, following an approach that includes the verification of certain competitive practices applied to development adopted by some countries, under a critical perspective, not flouting the international context, and globalisation, differences and conflicts which lay between hegemonic and developing nations within the global economy. / O presente trabalho tem por escopo analisar o direito da concorrência, situando-o como instrumento de implementação de políticas públicas para o desenvolvimento econômico. A associação entre as temáticas do direito da concorrência e o desenvolvimento econômico, instrumento e possível efeito, corresponde, sobretudo, à função múltipla da questão concorrencial, que possibilita com que esta seja arrolada ao mesmo tempo, como política pública, e garantia de manutenção sistêmica. Igualmente, leva-se em consideração, os relevantes impactos que as relações concorrenciais diretas, ou indiretas, geram nas mais variadas esferas da vida econômica e social, como no pleno emprego, nas relações de consumo e, sobretudo, no desenvolvimento. Para alcançar o intento, foram analisadas as concepções tradicionais do Direito da Concorrência aplicado ao poder econômico no mercado e à regulação, em abordagem que compreende ainda, o estudo da noção do poder, e ordem econômica e concorrencial brasileira. Tratou-se também da questão do desenvolvimento, sob aspectos conceituais e históricos. Analisa ainda o Direito da Concorrência como instrumento de implementação de políticas públicas para o esenvolvimento econômico, seguindo uma abordagem que compreende a verificação de determinadas práticas concorrenciais aplicadas ao desenvolvimento adotadas por alguns países, sob uma perspectiva crítica, que não despreza o contexto internacional, a globalização, as diferenças e os conflitos que se estabelecem entre os Estados periféricos e as nações hegemônicas no âmbito da economia mundial.

As profundas mudanças trazidas pela sociedade da informação, em especial o advento da Internet, tiveram enorme impacto sobre as interações humanas, modificando a forma como as pessoas se relacionam e consomem bens e serviços. Nesse contexto, surgem inúmeros serviços prestados por empresas baseadas na rede mundial de computadores. Características destes novos mercados como o uso de plataformas de múltiplos lados, o uso intensivo de novas tecnologias, a presença de efeitos ou externalidades de rede, a interligação entre serviços distintos, o oferecimento de serviços de forma gratuita ao consumidor e o entrelaçamento entre os diversos serviços prestados, desafiam conceitos tradicionais do direito concorrencial como mercado relevante, poder de mercado e venda casada. Faz-se necessária, assim, a adaptação da metodologia de análise antitruste, por meio da analise dos fundamentos teóricos que dão suporte à sua aplicação, considerando-se as particularidades presentes nesses mercados. O presente estudo tem por objetivo analisar o controle de condutas nesses novos setores de Internet por meio da análise das particularidades econômicas desses novos setores e as consequências desse enfoque sobre a análise antitruste. / The deep changes brought by the information society, especially the rising of the Internet, caused an enormous impact over human interactions, changing the way people relate and the way people consume goods and services. As a consequence of this new reality, services provided by web based companies emerged. Some characteristics of those new markets, such as the use of multiple side platforms, the intensive use of new technologies, the existence of network effects or network externalities, the connection of distinct services, the offer of zero price services and the deep connection between the services, challenge traditional concepts of antitrust law, like relevant market, market power and tying. Therefore, traditional antitrust analysis and its theoretical foundations must be reviewed, considering the particularities of those markets. The main objective of this study is to analyze the conduct control on these new Internet sectors, considering its economic particularities and the consequences of these view on antitrust analysis.

Smyslem práce bylo popsat a kriticky zhodnotit právní úpravu dominantního postavení a s ním úzce spojené vymezení relevantního trhu v prostředí České republiky, Evropské unie a kolébky moderního antitrustového zákonodárství Spojených států amerických. Důraz byl kladen na komparativní analýzu systémů, zejména co se týče vymezení klíčových pojmů a celkového přístupu. Nastíněn byl historický vývoj soutěžního práva se zaměřením na dominantní postavení, jehož určení může mít pro soutěžitele nepříjemné následky a nutnost větší opatrnosti. Následně byly podrobněji představeny úpravy ve vymezených systémech s ohledem na zásadní otázky stanovení dominantního postavení na trhu současně s podrobným představením vymezování relevantního trhu, kde se následně dominance určuje, přes průběžné objasňování a diskutování dalších pojmů v právních předpisech využívaných. Značný prostor byl věnován problematice substituovatelnosti výrobků a služeb, který představoval základní úskalí při vymezování relevantního trhu. Při výkladu bylo pracováno zejména s právními předpisy, klíčovými rozhodnutími soudních orgánů, doplňkovými výkladovými materiály a odbornou literaturou. Práce také částečně hodnotí účelnost a funkčnost úpravy. V praktické části práce byly rozebrány dva vzorové případy Úřadu pro ochranu hospodářské soutěže,...

The recent massive shift by Americans into investment funds and the attendant rise of a core group of institutional shareholders has transformed the financial market landscape. This dissertation explores the economic and policy implications associated with this shift to intermediated capital markets. The underlying assumption has always been that the growing presence of institutional investors in capital markets would improve the corporate governance of their portfolio companies, thereby reducing managerial agency costs and increasing firm value. My research explains why the reality deviates from that ideal. Using two novel perspectives—tax and antitrust—this dissertation reveals the disruptive effects and market distortions associated with the rise of institutional ownership. Chapter 1 of this dissertation, Common Ownership: A Game Changer in Corporate Compliance, explores the effect of overlapping institutional ownership of public companies by institutional investors on corporate tax avoidance. Leading scholars now recognize that this type of “common ownership” can change company objectives and behavior in a way that may lead to economic distortions. This chapter explores one unexamined peril associated with such common ownership: the effect of this core group of institutional investors on the tax avoidance behavior of their portfolio companies. I show how common ownership can lead to a reduction in those companies’ tax liability by means of a newly recognized phenomenon I call “flooding.” This term describes a practice by which different companies that are owned by the same institutional shareholders simultaneously take aggressive tax positions to reduce their tax obligations. Due to the IRS’s limited audit capacity, this synchronized behavior is likely to overwhelm the agency and substantially reduce the probability that tax noncompliance will be detected and penalized. This outcome runs counter to the classic deterrence theory model (which assumes that the threat of enforcement deters noncompliance) and demonstrates how common ownership changes the way public firms approach legal risks. By revealing the systematic compliance distortion and attendant enforcement challenges that ensue when the same investors “own it all,” this chapter also highlights a hidden social cost of common ownership. Under the domination of common institutional investors, companies can more easily shirk their taxes, reducing U.S. tax revenues by billions. Ironically, many of these same investors proclaim themselves as socially responsible stewards of the companies they own, attracting millions of individual investors who factor Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) issues into their investment decisions. Corporate “flooding” affords an instructive example of the weakness of so-called ESG investment model. To mitigate the detrimental effect of common ownership on corporate tax compliance, this chapter proposes a double sanctions regime, whereby institutional investors would be penalized along with their portfolio companies for improper tax avoidance. Such a regime may help restore deterrence and may incentivize institutional investors to keep their social promises. Chapter 2 of this dissertation, The Agency Tax Costs of Mutual Funds, unveils another tax-related pitfall associated with what some scholars term the “separation of ownership from ownership” problem in intermediated markets. In such markets, retail mutual fund investors cede investment and voting decisions to institutional investors who manage the funds. As a result, actions undertaken unilaterally by financial intermediaries dictate the tax liability of passive individual investors. This chapter argues that the tax decisions of institutional investors are often guided by their own tax considerations rather than by the tax considerations of the beneficiaries who own mutual funds through conventional taxable accounts. Due to the pass-through tax rules that govern investment funds, these beneficiaries, unlike the institutional investors (who are compensated based on pre-tax performance), are tax-sensitive. These diverging incentives give rise to a new type of an agency costs problem. These agency tax costs arise from the institutional investors’ trading decisions, corporate stewardship activities, and their preferences in the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) context. I argue that the structure of M&A deals, the method of payment used in such deals, and even the premiums paid to sellers in such deals are distorted because the votes of passive tax-sensitive retail investors are cast by tax-insensitive institutional investors. As a result, institutional investors not only fail to replicate the tax outcomes that tax-sensitive investors could have achieved had they owned stock directly, but they also distort corporate voting outcomes for all stakeholders—even those with unmediated investments. This chapter proposes several options for mitigating agency tax costs, including mandatory separation of funds based on the tax profile of the beneficiaries, heightened tax disclosure by mutual funds, decentralization of votes in mutual fund sponsors, and pass-through voting systems. These alternatives would reduce the agency tax costs of mutual funds without imposing new agency costs on tax-insensitive shareholders who also rely on institutional investors for portfolio management. The agency tax costs problem undermines the traditional assumption that mutual funds and their individual investors have the common goal of maximizing returns. My research reveals that this underlying assumption is flawed, as it overlooks the tax rules that govern investment funds and the way these rules shape the economic incentives of mutual funds managers and advisors. These incentives create a conflict of interest between institutional investors and their tax-sensitive investors, which has been largely overlooked. The analysis of the agency tax costs problem also illuminates the ways in which the rise of financial intermediaries has impacted the tax behavior of public corporations, which in turn, has affected the tax liability of investors in capital markets. While this result has significant implications for market participants and society at large, the paths through which these effects occur and their underlying economic rationales have received little attention. This chapter addresses this scholarly gap by examining the role of corporate governance structures as well as the role of tax law and policy in shaping the tax incentives of the most powerful market actors in the U.S. economy. Chapter 3 of this dissertation, The Corporate Governance Cartel, offers a novel antitrust perspective on a growing phenomenon in capital markets that has accompanied the rise of institutional ownership: institutional investor coalitions. Traditionally, corporate law has regarded such coalitions as desirable, a solution to the well-known collective action problem facing public shareholders. In this chapter, I challenge that view by revealing the anticompetitive risks that investor coalitions pose. This chapter shows how investor coalitions can emerge at the border between firms and markets, affecting not only the intra-firm governance arrangements of the companies held by the coalition members—but capital markets as well. At the firm/market border, cooperation among institutional investors, even around seemingly benign corporate governance issues, provides an opportunity for tacit collusion among these investors in the markets in which they compete. To illustrate this problem, I use an antitrust lens to analyze the collective efforts of institutional investors to restrict the use of dual-class stock in initial public offerings (IPOs). This original account of the coalition against dual-class structures exposes the significant anticompetitive effects that may arise at the IPO juncture when competing buyers of shares in the primary market coordinate their response to a governance term. Since the members of the coalition collectively possess most of the expected market demand for public offerings, their joint efforts can be seen as an exercise of buyer-side power. The exploitation of such power effectively creates a cartel of buyers in the primary market, resulting in two potential economic distortions: (1) abnormal underpricing of dual-class offerings, and (2) suboptimal governance arrangements. Both distortions reveal overlooked perils associated with the massive aggregation of power by institutional investors. In my antitrust analysis of investor coalitions, I also focus on institutional investor consortiums, trade associations that promote governance principles on behalf of their institutional members, which notably are on the rise. In analyzing these consortiums, this chapter draws upon antitrust rules relative to standard-setting organizations and explores how these anticompetitive risks are exacerbated by these investor consortiums. Finally, this chapter proposes immediate regulatory responses aimed at preventing institutional investors from engaging in collective actions that limit competition. The suggested policies represent a means to resolve the delicate tension between the goal of corporate law to encourage collaboration among shareholders and the goal of antitrust law to restrict cooperation among competitors.

The research question that moves the present work is whether and how competition law shall play a role in making our society more ‘sustainable’, intending this term in a broad meaning, and therefore linked to social, economic and environmental sustainability. The question raises from the awareness of the problems that are affecting our society, also if we refer at its democratic foundations. In particular, we considered that issues such as increasing income inequalities, raising market concentration rates and the even faster climate changes are topics that cannot be outside the academic analysis of the various policies. Therefore, if we try to answer at the question if competition law shall play a role in this context, the analysis should start from the very foundations of this discipline. At this purpose, in our research, we scrutinised how the most representative competition law regimes in the world - i.e., the US antitrust law and the EU competition law systems – developed during their history. This analysis is conducted by reading through legislative sources, policy statements, judicial decisions and scholar works. What emerges is that competition law shall not only be focused on mere economic and econometric objectives, such economic efficiency, but it was intended more as a structural instrument, created for preventing the concentration of an excessive degree of economic power on the same subject or on a bounce of entities. Therefore, after having affirmed this structuralist aim of competition law, it is possible to understand how every other objective shall be considered as a by-product of a healthy competitive process, and not as an end of competition law in itself. This is particularly clear in the European context, as competition law ought not to be intended as a separate or lone subject, but as a field of law well rooted into the EU and its Member States’ constitutional traditions. After having established that competition law shall play a role in the transition towards a more sustainable society, the focus moves on how this task shall be performed. For this purpose, the present research scrutinised the issues we mentioned before, by making a comparative analysis between the EU and the U.S. competition law and antitrust models and, inside the EU environment, among the various solutions adopted in the Member States. This analysis first needed to be carried out by means of an empirical assessment of the issue at stake, especially from an economic standpoint. Then, the legal tools needed in order to reach the desired outcomes were scrutinised, first by making reference to the solutions already adopted by enforcers and Courts on the basis of the existing rules, and, subsequently, new tools are analysed and proposed. In particular, the research establishes a connection between income inequalities and the increasing rates of market concentration. The latter dynamic was deemed particularly intense in the digital market context, which are characterised by market dynamics which escape from the common understanding of competition, as they lead the market to tip in favour of a firm, usually the first mover. In a nutshell, they are characterised by a sort of winner takes all structure. This field represents the core of this research, as it is where excessive market concentration shows most its detrimental effects and the need to a structuralist approach to competition law appears much needed. Therefore, this work aims to provide its contribution to the very active academic debate on this field. However, this research does not want to be limited to the digital market problem but is directed at casting lights on the need for a multi-value approach to competition law at 360 degrees, which can turn into a multi-tool enforcement to better tailor the application of competition rules to all the analysed issues, which are however interrelated thanks to the broad concept of ‘sustainability’ outlined above, in line with the Brundtland Report on sustainability issued in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development. What emerges is that competition law ought to play a role in the transition towards a more sustainable economy and society. This depends on policy choices, and this work is aimed – in the realm of the current scholar debate on this topic – at providing its constructive contribution. However, what is important to affirm is that policy choices directed at establishing the multi-value and multi-tool competition law described above are not only based on progressive or hipster academic ideas, but they are deeply rooted into our societies’ constitutional traditions, and, in the end, in a healthy conception of the liberal economy itself.

No description available.

<p>The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse the significance of economic thinking and arguments in the treatment of licence agreements in EC competition law. A central question is to what degree the concept of competition in EC law reflects an economically realistic approach to competition. The study also investigates to what degree the economic functioning of intellectual property is considered in competition regulation and how much the economic functioning of the licence agreement is considered. The investigation mainly consists of a comparative analysis of EC competition law and American antitrust law concerning the economic arguments and their importance. The treatment of territorial restrictions, field of use restrictions, quantity clauses, tie-outs, tie-ins, grant back, no-challenge clauses and price restrictions are of special interest here. </p><p>This study shows that an economically realistic view of competition has influenced current EC competition law, especially in the Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation (TTBER). Exceptions from this development in the EC law are mainly due to the goal of integration of the common market. Territorial restrictions are strictly regulated in the TTBER even when the parties’ market shares are below the market thresholds defined in the regulation.</p><p>The function of intellectual property rights are not much considered in EC competition law but there are general remarks about the economic functioning of patents in the Guidelines for the TTBER. However, it is difficult to find evidence for economic reasoning about patents in the formation of concrete rules. On the contrary, patents are weakened by the widened concept of exhaustion presented in the Guidelines.</p><p>The economic functioning of the licence agreement is considered in the rules of TTBER and the economic arguments for clauses which create incentives for making investments or give the possibility of control are acknowledged. However, the free riding argument has a weak position when applied to territorial restrictions, which are more formalistically regulated.</p><p>The EC competition law has become more similar to American antitrust law. The decisive difference consists in the judicial treatment of territorial restrictions, where the goal of integration is still of central importance in EC law.</p>