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Legal Design in Sustainable Antitrust.
- Source :
- Journal of Competition Law & Economics; Dec2023, Vol. 19 Issue 4, p556-579, 24p
- Publication Year :
- 2023
-
Abstract
- We lay out a roadmap for how the legislator could create a framework of 'sustainability corridors' that would allow relying on the ancillary restraints/ Wouters doctrine to make antitrust law more accommodating of sustainability considerations. Our analysis goes beyond the general feasibility of such corridors. It discusses different use-cases for such exemptions and methods for assessing the necessity of competitive restraints to achieve a legislatively defined sustainability goal. We show how this avoids the pitfalls of a multigoals approach, under which it would be left to antitrust authorities and courts to reconcile sustainability and competition objectives independent of a legislative specification, whereas out-of-market benefits (externalities) that would escape even a broad consumer welfare approach can still be accounted for. Our proposal sets out specific requirements for such sustainability corridors that ensure that the ensuing antitrust assessment is governed by a strict and quantifiable indispensability test. Specifically, we discuss three such instances: specific sustainability obligations placed on individual firms, which may however require collective actions; specific mandates that are targeted at the respective industry rather than individual firms; and policy objectives that are not targeted at individual firms or industries but provide a metric for the measurement of sustainability benefits (for example, by way of conducting an abatement cost analysis). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- ANTITRUST law
SUSTAINABILITY
PUBLIC welfare
COST analysis
ECONOMIC competition
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 17446414
- Volume :
- 19
- Issue :
- 4
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Journal of Competition Law & Economics
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 174642910
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1093/joclec/nhad016