Law Commons^™

Anti-Competitive Agreements: The Meaning Of “Agreement”, George A. Hay

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

The trend towards convergence of substantive antitrust doctrine means that most jurisdictions now condemn agreements among competitors that fix prices. But that same convergence means that those same jurisdictions must wrestle with the problem of how to establish the existence of an agreement, especially in an oligopolistic industry where high prices could, at least in theory, be the result simply of oligopolistic interdependence. Do we condemn such interdependence? Do we ignore it and require an explicit agreement? Or is there some middle ground? This chapter explores how the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, the EU, have approached the problem …