Recently competition policy has become an important trade policy issue, since many policy makers now see competition policy as an important instrument to secure market access' to foreign markets. This paper analyzes this issue both from a theoretical point of view and from the review of the recent development of the Japanese competition policy. While voluntary trade cartels have a strongly negative international spillover, export cartels or international cartels do not constrain market access,' and export restraints were often used to ameliorate trade frictions. Moreover, domestic cartels often have a positive international spillover on the export from foreign countries. Thus, the recent focus on competition policy from market access' concern is misleading. The Japanese government has substantially strengthened its competition policy in the 1990s, especially in terms of drastic reduction of cartels exempted from the application of Antimonopoly Law and in strengthening its enforcement against cartels. While these changes of competition policy would be highly beneficial to the Japanese economy, it is not clear whether such policy changes could have a substantial impact on market access.'
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
6720.
Length: Date of creation: Sep 1998 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6720
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Find related papers by JEL classification: L40 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - General F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies
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