The Commercial Times reported on 9th December, 2010 that EU imposed a fine of 26 billion on five TFT-LCD firms. Also it was covered that during the enforcement of Antitrust, Samsung was indemnified against punishment since it acted as an informer, while Chimei Innolux incurred the heaviest fine of £á0.3 billion. Samsung is not only playing the role of a supplier to TFT-LCD firms in Taiwan, it is also a competitor and an important customer of them. At the time when 911 terrorist attacks happened in USA, global economy had entered a deep recession. Taiwan¡¦s TFT-LCD industry formed an alliance with Samsung after experiencing a deficit for three consecutive quarters. However, when investigation of Anti-dumping was undergoing, Samsung betrayed its promises. By studying this incident, the co-opetition relationship between Samsung and the TFT-LCD industry in Taiwan was being explored. Besides, how and what the industry should learn from this lesson is reviewed from the application of co-opetition strategies as well as the viewpoint of Game Theory.

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of Political Science, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

No description available.

This study flows from fundamentals by describing the raison d'etre of international competition policy: how competition law, interacts with trade policy and why that interaction has become a critical concern that should be addressed in an international cooperative framework. From this observation, this thesis concludes that policy initiatives to establish international substantive competition rules are both desirable and feasible. They are desirable because they would avoid international trade disputes deriving from conflicting implementations of trade and competition policies. They are feasible trough the application of a methodology which balances efficiency, fairness and social objectives. Such a methodology is proposed by the author for the determination of common substantive competition rules. / This set of proposals identifies changes that would be acceptable to most national participants in world trade and classifies trade practices into three categories: First, the trade practices prohibited per se, for which international standards can be reached in a short time; second, the trade practices examined under a rule-of-reason approach for which some common standards seem obtainable only in a mid-term frame given the existing divergent antitrust philosophies; third, international mergers and antidumping laws for which, given the strong industrial policy considerations, international substantive rules are not likely to emerge in the foreseeable future. / Finally, as practical illustration, this thesis explores the long-run potential for replacing anti-competitive aspects of current antidumping laws with more efficient and more equitable competition-policy safeguards. The substitution of the international price discrimination standard commonly applied in antidumping review by the predatory pricing standard favoured under antitrust investigations can be achieved through the introduction of two criteria: determination of the "impact on the domestic economy, as a whole" and calculation of the variable cost standard.

The Senator Lines' case, currently pending before the European Court for Human Rights, reveals a lack of procedural fairness of the European Antitrust enforcement under the terms of the European Convention for Human Rights. But in spite of a well-established concern for Fundamental Rights from the European Community, the later is still not bound by the Convention. / That is why it is critical that the EC accede to the Convention following the example of its branches. Meanwhile, it is necessary to determine whether the Member States could be held responsible for the Community's acts that violate the rights protected by the Convention. That is the question the Court will have to answer in the Senator Lines' case. Nevertheless, the Council Regulation which organises the antitrust enforcement procedure must be reformed in order to ensure an indispensable balance of power.

This thesis evaluates the arguments for replacing antidumping laws with competition laws or, alternatively, for recasting antidumping laws in the pattern of competition laws. / The work discusses the objectives and criteria used in antidumping and antitrust cases. It highlights the harmful and chilling effects of antidumping sanctions. It is a study of whether antidumping laws should be replaced by either supra national (Competition laws) or harmonised domestic antitrust regimes, which penalise international predatory pricing without at the same time penalising non-predatory international price discrimination. / It is suggested that progressive reforms of antidumping rules should become an agenda item of all future WTO Rounds and should focus on reconciling antidumping rules with antitrust treatment of predatory pricing practices. / The progressive inclusion of antitrust criteria into WTO antidumping laws should be made a condition for progress in future WTO negotiations.

The thesis assesses the causes and implications of Turkey's alignment with European Union (EU) policies and institutions in the areas of technical legislation (TL) and antitrust between 1996 and 2010. It argues that EU conditionality, based on the promise of positive rewards such as full membership, largely accounts for Turkey's high record in adopting EU policies and institutions in both areas, in rational-institutionalist fashion. This is because, in welldefined periods, the Turkish government deemed EU conditionality credible enough to walTant major adoption activities. However, regarding TL, EU-related domestic utility considerations (DUCs) played a crucial pali in suppOliing the development of the implementation and to some extent the enforcement dimensions. In antitrust, adoption and enforcement were also crucially suppOlied by non-EU factors, not least the regulatory drive that followed the 2000-2001 financial crises. By contrast, social-constructivist EU-related factors only played a marginal role with regard to adoption, implementation and enforcement. To avoid a bias toward EU explanations, I use counterfactual thought experiments, and compare each positive case with a negative case, where alignment is very low. My negative cases are mutual recognition and state aid. The study reveals the purchase of DUCs in countries where the credibility of EU conditionality is problematic, such as Turkey. It demonstrates that different explanatory models may account for alignment in one policy area, depending on the dimension considered. Turkey's alignment has domestic and external implications. Domestically, although Turkey made important steps towards the idealtype of the EU-style regulatory state in both areas, the transfOlmation was largely reactive, and remained incomplete. Externally, Turkey's alignment scenario, as well as both policy areas' intrinsic characteristics, imply that Mediterranean partner countries' prospects for comprehensive regulatory convergence with the EU are weak. The study relies on primary and secondary sources, non-structured interviews, and extensive fieldwork.

Until recently, institutional reforms implemented under the so-called 'apertura' economic strategy has emphasized the correction of macroeconomic imbalances through specific policy measures (i.e. privatization, open trade, fiscal balance, stable exchange rates). As overall imbalances have been corrected, policy makers are considering the introduction of a second generation of 'institutional reforms'. Consequently, the focus of reform would shift into the promotion of productivity, competition and innovation at the entrepreneurial level. These institutional goals presuppose a new regulatory framework, amenable to market functioning. Antitrust policy is one example among many regulatory initiatives being advocated to support market reforms. This thesis shows how the broad misconceptions about the nature of markets still pervades policy-making throughout the region. Antitrust policies could threaten to reproduce, under powerful new forms, the former interventionism that characterised 'development' policies of the 1960s and 1970s. Paradoxically, this interventionism would be justified in the name of preserving market transparency. Advocate of antitrust policies often share a subtle anti-market bias: Markets are regarded structures, where density of concentration determines how competitive they are. Following the welfare implications drawn from the neoclassical models of equilibrium, economic exchange is examined under severely constrained conditions: individuals are assumed to possess complete information and transactions are 'timeless'. The aftermath of this perspective is that all business arrangements are regarded 'restrictions to competition', some of these suspected of sheltering monopolistic purposes. The effects of these policies in the region could be particularly harmful in Latin America, as business interacting in the domestic markets of the region have developed over time numerous forms of unofficial institutional devices, most of them addressed to complement the lack of transparency of the enforcement of the official legal framework. In the wake of apertura, these institutional devices, coupled with high levels of economic concentration, appear to favour monopolistic conducts, but in fact they attempt to correct the adverse effects of decades of dirigisme and uncertainly of a stable rule of law upon business activities. Latin markets are undergoing a fast transformation since aperture began. Due to the lifting of trade regulations, there is a significant wave of mergers and acquisitions, privatization processes, setting up joint ventures, selling undervalued assets, and proliferation of new corporate forms and other forms of efficient association reshaping old inefficient structures and replacing them with new ones. Young Latin American antitrust agencies have already challenged many of these udertakings as sheltering some form of monopolistic endeavor. Under a perspective emphasizing the evolutive nature of market interaction, these conducts appear simply as modalities by which the economic knowledge of each market participant is passed on to others in the system. These seemingly monopolistic attempts are in fact efficient arrangements allowing businesses to plan in advance their activities relating to conjectural future business scenarios. These arrangements sometime encourage mergers, vertical integration, and even collusion, but they are also responsible for new market discoveries, innovation and increased production. To support this conclusion, this theses is supported on the heuristic process view of markets initiated by the School of Subjectivism in economic science. To promote competition and innovation within Latin America's weak institutional setting, a strong policy of deregulation, and limitation to government intervention through political accountability and judicial review is advocated in place of conventional antitrust policy, which would retain a marginal role.

Thesis (LL. M.)--University of Toronto, 2004. / Adviser: J.G. MacIntosh.