Competition policy’s social paradox: are we losing sight of the wood for the trees?

Anca D. Chirita

European Competition Journal, 2018, vol. 14, issue 2-3, 367-416

Abstract: The present contribution seeks to provide a normative justification for the better consideration of employment and its negative social consequences in the area of mergers. First, it challenges the widespread rhetoric of competition policy when advancing economic efficiency as a goal of competition policy. Second, it argues that the promotion of efficiency-driven, fierce competition comes at the expense of other sensible social values, such as job creation. As evidenced by statistics, this contribution unravels how job cuts follow from mergers and acquisitions. It argues (i) in favour of an overhaul of the efficiency defence with the aim of focusing more actively on job creation, or at least on balancing the number of job cuts with the number of newly created jobs and (ii) against anti-competitive practices such as social dumping and camouflage.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17441056.2018.1533366 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:recjxx:v:14:y:2018:i:2-3:p:367-416

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/recj20

DOI: 10.1080/17441056.2018.1533366

Access Statistics for this article

European Competition Journal is currently edited by Philip Marsden

More articles in European Competition Journal from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().