Protecting free market entry as a cornerstone of competition policy

In this work an attempt has been made to substantiate a strong critical position towards the traditional way of planning and implementing competition policy in the majority of advanced economies, in consideration of the crucial role that such a policy can play in promoting international competitiveness of national firms and production system. Properly planning and implementing competition policy is, in fact, the first necessary step that should be undertaken in order to consent national firms to work in a milieu which is actually competitive and able to adequately stimulate their productive efficiency (internal and dynamic) and, as a consequence, to increase their competitiveness in the international markets. In particular, this work intends to show how a competition policy– aiming at actually promoting and protecting in a correct and effective way its beneficial effects in a market economy in its real meaning, that is as a dynamic process of rivalry among firms generating innovations and acting in a continually changing, and thus uncertain, context– should have as its cornerstone the safeguard of their freedom to enter (and go out of) the market, rather than to be based, as traditionally occurs, on parameters such as their dimension and number. An adequate support and acknowledgement to this thesis has not only been searched in the modern competition theory, but also in the antitrust practice, with regard both to the real-world design and implementation of competition policy by some specific countries (Germany) and to the measures adopted by the antitrust authorities in order to solve specific antitrust cases, national or not, (Aprilia – Piaggio case, Heineken – Birra Moretti case, Microsoft case, etc.).