IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/recjxx/v20y2024i1p45-77.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Intel saga: what went wrong with the Commission’s AEC test (in the General Court’s view)?

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Lauer

Abstract

The General Court’s annulment of the European Commission’s finding that Intel’s conditional rebate scheme was abusive underscores the Court’s readiness to scrutinize in detail the economic analysis, including the as-efficient competitor (AEC) test. This paper critically reviews some of the key errors that the Commission, according to the Court, made in relation to the implementation of that test, focusing on some of its main ingredients, namely the contestable share of the market, the conditional portion of the rebates, and the relevant cost benchmark. We conclude that the Court’s assessment provides useful lessons for how to perform thorough and robust economic analysis not only within the context of an AEC test but in competition cases more generally. At the same time, considering the test’s intrinsic limitations, we find that, aside from the test’s implementation, its informative value should also be explored, based on economic theory and the facts of the case.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Lauer, 2024. "The Intel saga: what went wrong with the Commission’s AEC test (in the General Court’s view)?," European Competition Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(1), pages 45-77, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:recjxx:v:20:y:2024:i:1:p:45-77
    DOI: 10.1080/17441056.2023.2242698
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17441056.2023.2242698
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/17441056.2023.2242698?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:recjxx:v:20:y:2024:i:1:p:45-77. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/recj .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.