Acceso usuarios
Marco Bellia
In some recent works, Louis Kaplow deals with a recurring antitrust question: what rules and remedies are necessary to prevent supracompetitive prices in oligopolies, that are markets with a few sellers? Under an economic and non-formalistic approach, Kaploui examines whether the term «agreement» is susceptible of an interpretation sufficiently broad to include situations of tacit parallelism (or pure interdependence) in absence of explicit agreements or concerted actions among the parties. His conclusion is very skeptical concerning current application of antitrust rules against anticompetitive agreements, and calls for a different competition policy toiwards price fixing. This article gives an overview of Kaplows scholarship and discusses its potential reception and application in the European and ltalian legal systems. It is argued that two main problems affect Kaplows interesting model. First, reliance on economic theory can be even more problematic than requiring evidence of an agreement in order for illicit collusion to be proved. Second, the economic approach leads to a sort of strict liability for undertakings in oligopolistic markets, and that would be hardly acceptable without a proper amendment of current competition law. Moreover, were such a paradigm shift possible in Europe, it should consistently involve the application of arto 102 TFEU, which prohibits the abuse of an individual or collective dominant position. As a final point, a more practical problem is outlined. Since Kaplouws thesis concerns the link between market structure and antitrust liability, it sheds light on the issue of optimal application of merger control as well: in accordance with such an economic approach, a potential problem affecting current ltalian merger control system highlighted in the last section of this paper
1. Introduzione. - 2. Il divieto di intese anticoncorrenziali e lo studio di Kaplow. - 3. Cenni in merito al problema dell'oligopolio ed alla figura (europea) della posizione dominante collettiva. - 4. Il paradosso della prova. - 5. Una possibile nozione di intesa alla luce della teoria economica. - 6. La critica di Kaplow alla nozione tradizionale di intesa ed all'impiego di communication-based prohibitions. - 7. Brevi considerazioni sull'utilizzo della teoria economica in materia antitrust e spunti di riflessione per il diritto e la politica della concorrenza in Europa. - 8. Un potenziale problema in materia di controllo delle concentrazioni in Italia?
