 What's the aim for competition policy: optimizing market structure or encouraging innovative behaviors?Jean-Luc Gaffard and
Michel Quéré
SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL Abstract: Innovation is usually thought of as a change in the fundamentals of an economy, which can require adjustments by policy-makers. The latter are usually thought as in regard to a dominant vision, which is to restore an optimal market structure, and leads to a competition policy mainly aimed at controlling for antitrust practices and limiting market power. In this paper, we favor another vision of innovation, as a discovery process that cannot allow ex ante a definition of best practices. Dealing with information issues in two different and alternative perspectives, we argue that antitrust authorities confront a market imperfection–market failure dilemma (MI–MF dilemma) which leads them to favor the existence of appreciative and discretionary policy rather than encouraging the existence of any market structure thought of as optimal as regards the current state of information. We conclude with policy implications, contrasting the EU with the US. Keywords: Competition; Innovation; Information (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 2006, 16 (1-2), pp.175 - 187. ⟨10.1007/s00191-005-0014-0⟩ There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:spmain:hal-03417188 DOI: 10.1007/s00191-005-0014-0 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL |
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