Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons^™

The design of mechanisms for the enforcement of rules regarding anticompetitive practices has been the subject of considerable controversy in both developed and developing countries. Public competition authorities have advantages in terms of scale economies and coordination of competing policy objectives. Private rights of action enhance the capacity of legal regimes to generate information and deter collusive agreements and exclusionary practices. Private enforcement also increases the transaction costs of regulatory capture. Given these differences, mixed regimes are likely to be superior to purely public or private arrangements. However, most national jurisdictions grant exclusive authority to public agencies and prosecutors. This …