 Japanese Antitrust Law and the Competitive MixAndrew R. Dick No 74, Working Papers from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State Abstract: Japanese antitrust law exempts a variety of vertical and horizontal restraints that are commonly regarded as anti-competitive. Measures of market structure, market power and deadweight loss in the United States and Japan, however, indicate a striking similarity in the level of "competition" in the two countries despite their very dissimilar antitrust environments. This paper attempts to explain this apparent empirical paradox by adopting the hypothesis that antitrust alters foremost the relative mix of competitive forms, rather than the absolute level of competition. Three Japanese antitrust exemptions are used to illustrate how particular vertical and horizontal restraints allow fIrms to substitute among price and non-price forms of competition. The examples show that by altering the competitive mix, these antitrust exemptions may in fact be efficiency-enhancing in cases of free-riding, public good investments, and empty cores. Evidence from several Japanese markets lends empirical support. JEL-codes: K21 L40 (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:cbscwp:74 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.