Competition and Buyer Power through an Ordoliberal lens makes top two ten!

Thanks to all of you, my paper on “Competition and Buyer Power through an Ordoliberal lens” has reached in the last two weeks the two top ten lists of most read/download papers of the two categories it has been classified by SSRN: Regulation (European) and Competition Law (European). This is a great source of satisfaction, proud and at the same time thankfulness to those of you interested in my research.

If you have not yet read the paper and want to find out what Ordoliberalism is all about, have a look at it.

Have a good weekend!

Visiting the EFTA Court

For the next 3 weeks I will be in Luxembourg doing a research visit to the EFTA Court to learn more about EEA law and get some literature related to competition law and public procurement. This is an opportunity that I am looking forward to and that I have been very lucky to get!

The EFTA Court is the little brother of the ECJ. This body has jurisdiction with regard to EFTA States which are parties to the EEA Agreement: Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway. Nope, Switzerland who is part of the EFTA Agreement is not under the scrutiny of the EFTA Court (very odd but not a surprise when it comes to Switzerland and its peculiar relation with European Integration).

The Court has competence to deal with breaches of the EEA Agreement (basically an extension of the internal market fundamental freedoms) by rendering Judgments determining breaches of EEA law, advisory opinions for national courts dealing with EEA matters and deciding appeals from the EFTA Surveillance Authority (the parallel of the EU Commission).

In relation to my research there have been very few cases in the sphere EEA law that had dealt with buyer power. The notable exception is the Norwegian Color Line case (case no 59120). Apart from this case I have not found any other one in which buyer power has been an important element of a decision and/or Judgment so far. If you know of any, do let me know!

This picture was taken, literally, next to the Faculty of Law of the UiB!
Copyright: Uwe Kahl and found at http://www.panoramio.com/photo/72429

I have managed to do a bit of sightseeing so far as well and… Luxembourg is an odd city! Not only the city itself is built in an interesting and unusual way (in layers and filled with elevators/bridges/hills/cliffs) but also I am always confused what language to use: German, French, Luxembourgish… English? You never know what the other person will speak. Has been fun and interesting. Also the languages issues serve as somehow “market sharing”. Look at this pictures of these 2 fast-food restaurants. They are next to each other (literally)… do you notice something about the languages they use to attract clients?!

I am looking forward to these next weeks to learn more about EEA law and write a lot for my dissertation.

Until soon!

Competition and ordoliberalism

As a result of my fruitful and interesting research stay at the University of Freiburg and the Walter Eucken Institute I have been working on a paper entitled "Competition and Buyer Power through an Ordoliberal Lens". 

The paper submits that Ordoliberalism is a German school of economic thought that advocates regulating the free market economic based on a set of state imposed rules guaranteed by the economic constitution to impose a competitive order in society. It proposes an alternative method to pure laissez-faire and state planned economy for the better regulation of the market economy by having as goals the protection of the competitive process and individual freedom. In this article I submit that ordoliberalism, an indigenous European competition policy, is an adequate economic and analytical tool to base the practice and decision making of competition law and, in particular, for the regulation of buyer power. My aim is twofold: contribute to the discussion on what ordoliberalism is in general and in particular concerning competition policy, and offer a new perspective on an ordoliberal-oriented competition policy for the treatment of buyer power.

If you are interested in reading it, you can find the current version available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2579308

If you have any comments/suggestions, I will be very happy to receive them!