IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/gre/wpaper/2020-13.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is the Consumer Welfare Obsolete? A European Union Competition Law Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Frédéric Marty

    (Université Côte d'Azur, France
    GREDEG CNRS)

Abstract

In 2005, the European Commission advocated for a more economic approach for enforcing competition laws. The sole criterion for assessing the lawfulness of a market practice should be the appraisal of its net effects on consumer welfare. The Court of Justice was reluctant to adopt such an approach until its 2017 Intel Judgment. Its endorsement - which is debatable insofar as the judgment may give rise to different interpretations - may appear paradoxical in that it is concomitant with a sharp challenge to the consumer welfare criterion in the United States. The purpose of this article is to retrace the history of this criterion, particularly with regard to its adoption in the context of E.U. competition law. Our aim is to show that the criticisms of the effects-based approach can be addressed not by moving away from the consumer welfare criterion but by integrating it into a broader perspective, that also takes into account the protection of the competition process itself.

Suggested Citation

  • Frédéric Marty, 2020. "Is the Consumer Welfare Obsolete? A European Union Competition Law Perspective," GREDEG Working Papers 2020-13, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    • Handle: RePEc:gre:wpaper:2020-13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://195.220.198.217/GREDEG-WP-2020-13.pdf
    File Function: First version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bougette, Patrice & Deschamps, Marc & Marty, Frã‰Dã‰Ric, 2015. "When Economics Met Antitrust: The Second Chicago School and the Economization of Antitrust Law," Enterprise & Society, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(2), pages 313-353, June.
    2. Thierry Kirat & Frédéric Marty, 2019. "The Late Emerging Consensus Among American Economists on Antitrust Laws in the Second New Deal," CIRANO Working Papers 2019s-12, CIRANO.
    3. Hayek, F. A., 2012. "Hayek on Hayek," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226321202 edited by Kresge, Stephen & Wenar, Leif, November.
    4. Herbert Hovenkamp, 2018. "The NCAA and the Rule of Reason," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 52(2), pages 323-335, March.
    5. Frédéric Marty, 2013. "Critère du concurrent aussi efficace et approche par les effets en matière d'éviction par les prix," Post-Print halshs-00851349, HAL.
    6. Patrice Bougette & Oliver Budzinski & Frédéric Marty, 2019. "Exploitative Abuse and Abuse of Economic Dependence: What Can We Learn From an Industrial Organization Approach?," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 129(2), pages 261-286.
    7. Patrice Bougette & Marc Deschamps & Frédéric Marty, 2015. "When Economics Met Antitrust: The Second Chicago School and the Economization of Antitrust Law," Post-Print halshs-01090048, HAL.
    8. Thomas Piketty, 2013. "Le capital au XXIe siècle," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-00979232, HAL.
    9. Laurent Warlouzet, 2010. "The Rise of European Competition Policy, 1950-1991: A Cross-Disciplinary Survey of a Contested Policy Sphere," EUI-RSCAS Working Papers 80, European University Institute (EUI), Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies (RSCAS).
    10. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/1op860fg2l8f4p3acvk2hj0tmn is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Patrice Bougette & Frédéric Marty, 2020. "Information Exchange among Firms: The Coherence of Justice Brandeis' Regulated Competition Approach," GREDEG Working Papers 2020-56, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France, revised Feb 2021.
    2. Thierry Kirat & Frédéric Marty, 2021. "How Law and Economics Was Marketed in a Hostile World: the institutionalization of the field in the United States from the immediate post-war period to the Reagan years," Working Papers halshs-03124774, HAL.
    3. Thierry Kirat & Frédéric Marty, 2020. "From the First World War to the National Recovery Administration (1917-1935) - The Case for Regulated Competition in the United States during the Interwar Period," Working Papers halshs-03052417, HAL.
    4. Patrice Bougette & Oliver Budzinski & Frédéric Marty, 2019. "Exploitative Abuse and Abuse of Economic Dependence: What Can We Learn From an Industrial Organization Approach?," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 129(2), pages 261-286.
    5. Michael E. Doron, 2023. "Could Accounting Have Saved Itself from the Antitrust Laws?Revisiting the Antitrust Investigations into the US Accounting Profession 1966–1990," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 59(3), pages 847-871, September.
    6. Thierry Kirat & Frédéric Marty, 2019. "The Late Emerging Consensus Among American Economists on Antitrust Laws in the Second New Deal," CIRANO Working Papers 2019s-12, CIRANO.
    7. Thierry Kirat & Frédéric Marty, 2021. "The late emerging consensus among American economists on antitrust laws in the 2nd New Deal (1935-1941)," Post-Print halshs-03261721, HAL.
    8. Frédéric Marty, 2020. "Protecting the competitive process, not a competitive structure Reflections on the book by Nicolas Petit Big Tech and the Digital Economy," Working Papers halshs-03034024, HAL.
    9. David Cayla, 2022. "How the Digital Economy Challenges the Neoliberal Agenda: Lessons from the Antitrust Policies," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(2), pages 546-553, April.
    10. Thierry Kirat & Frédéric Marty, 2020. "The Late Emerging Consensus Among American Economists on Antitrust Laws in the Second New Deal (1935-1941) (Revised Version)," CIRANO Working Papers 2020s-46, CIRANO.
    11. William R. Morgan, 2023. "Finance Must Be Defended: Cybernetics, Neoliberalism and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-21, February.
    12. Francesco Saraceno, 2014. "L'impact économique des fortes inégalités : problèmes et solutions," Revue de l'OFCE, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(3), pages 187-200.
    13. Komlos, John & Schubert, Hermann, 2019. "Les origines du triomphe de Donald Trump," Revue de la Régulation - Capitalisme, institutions, pouvoirs, Association Recherche et Régulation, vol. 26.
    14. Paul Vertier, 2018. "The democratic challenges of electoral representation and populism : an empirical approach [Les défis démocratiques de la représentation électorale et du populisme : une approche empirique]," SciencePo Working papers Main tel-03419534, HAL.
    15. Etienne Farvaque & Alexander Mihailov & Alireza Naghavi, 2018. "The Grand Experiment of Communism: Discovering the Trade-Off between Equality and Efficiency," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 174(4), pages 707-742, December.
    16. Vassiliades, C. & Savvides, A. & Buonomano, A., 2022. "Building integration of active solar energy systems for façades renovation in the urban fabric: Effects on the thermal comfort in outdoor public spaces in Naples and Thessaloniki," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 30-47.
    17. Cécile Bonneau, 2020. "The Concentration of investment in education in the US (1970-2018)," Working Papers halshs-02875965, HAL.
    18. Odran Bonnet & Guillaume Flamerie de La Chapelle & Alain Trannoy & Etienne Wasmer, 2019. "Secular Trends in Wealth and Heterogeneous Capital: Land is Back... and Should Be Taxed," Working Papers hal-03570837, HAL.
    19. Ahmad Adeel & Bruno Notteboom & Ansar Yasar & Kris Scheerlinck & Jeroen Stevens, 2021. "Sustainable Streetscape and Built Environment Designs around BRT Stations: A Stated Choice Experiment Using 3D Visualizations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(12), pages 1-21, June.
    20. Arnaud Z. Dragicevic, 2019. "Market Coordination Under Non-Equilibrium Dynamics," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 697-715, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    anticompetitive practices; effects-based approach; consumer welfare; ordoliberalism; E.U. competition law;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K21 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Antitrust Law
    • L41 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:gre:wpaper:2020-13. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Patrice Bougette (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/credcfr.html .

    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.