American and European Monopolization Law: A Doctrinal and Empirical Comparison

Abstract

This paper focuses on the differences between Article 82 and Section 2, reflecting largely on the American experience. We start with a discussion of the American experience and use that as a background from which to examine the European law on monopolies. American law is more conservative (less interventionist), reflecting the error cost analysis that is increasingly common in American courts. The second half of this paper provides an empirical comparison of the American and European regimes. Although a preliminary empirical examination suggests that the scope of a country’s monopolization law is inversely related to its degree of trade dependence, the actual relationship between trade dependence and the scope of monopolization law appears to be an inverted U.

Keywords: monopolization, Section 2, Article 82, empirical antitrust, international antitrust

JEL Classification: K00, K21, K33