Global Competition Policy: Issues and Perspectives

Today, as never before, a term has crept into the vocabulary of policy makers, politicians, business, the media, and even academia: eco nomic globalization. It is a problematic term because it suffers from a lack of precision, although a great deal of work and energy has been ex pended in trying to better explain it as a phenomenon. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (oecd) has been keen to arrive at a workable definition. Generally speaking, economic globalization depicts the increasingly close linkages between national economies brought about by a process of internationalization and deregulation of investment aided by the revolutions in telecommunications and information technology and the consequent growing interdependence of policies between nations. Indeed, one of the consequences of this process of economic global ization has been an increasing analysis of domestic policy regimes in trade disputes between countries rather than traditional issues such as tariffs and quotas. This can be primarily attributed to the extent to which the multi lateral trading system has largely solved issues of border trade barriers in the industrialized world through successive General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (gatt) negotiations. Thus, much of the heat generated by the acrimonious trade discussions between Japan and the United States has been on the nature of Japanese antitrust-law enforcement and certain laws in Japan that restrict trade inside Japan's domestic market. Thus, is it now necessary to shift the emphasis of multilateral economic policymaking to ward the harmonization of domestic policy regimes such as antitrust? If the response is in the affirmative, it is important to note that there is a qualitative difference between removal and reductions in border distor tions to trade and the harmonization of domestic policy in terms of the role of international or, rather, supranational governance. The former has pro ceeded largely as a form of "negative" integration?such as the disman tling of barriers?but the latter implies an element of "positive" or "deeper" integration?i.e., the creation of common rules enforceable at the multilateral, supranational level. Clearly, this distinction strikes at the heart of notions of national sovereignty and autonomy. This essay explores some of the issues bound up in this extensive and complex discussion. The first section focuses on the causes and effects of