The causes of divergence between law and economics in European Competition Policy

Abstract

This work is an examination of the causes of divergence between the competition law of the European Communities, specifically Articles 81 and 82 of the E.C. Treaty and the regulation of mergers, and the microeconomic treatment of competition and industrial organisation. It is based on an analysis of the jurisprudential explanations of the objectives of Community competition law, Luhmann’s theory of autopoiesis on the interaction of the legal system with other social systems, the philosophy of the methodology of economics, the Chicago School’s critique of judicial antitrust policy and a detailed case study of the treatment of tacit collusion in both Community law and the microeconomics literature.